Xref: utzoo sci.math:4924 sci.physics:4956 comp.edu:1465
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!poseidon!ech
From: ech@poseidon.ATT.COM (Edward C Horvath)
Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.physics,comp.edu
Subject: Re: How to beat the high cost of text books!
Message-ID: <605@poseidon.ATT.COM>
Date: 30 Nov 88 17:42:09 GMT
References: <684@stech.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Lincroft, NJ
Lines: 50

From article <684@stech.UUCP>, by sysop@stech.UUCP (Jan Harrington):
> As the author of several textbooks, this gives me nightmares. There is more
> than you might think involved with the creation of a textbook...

Jan, your article is thoughtful and informative.  But you're wasting your
breath.  The same arguments have been advanced about free software --
i.e. you will get what you pay for -- but either you think your time and
effort are worth something or you don't.

If "information should be free" and anyone who sells information is somehow
"immoral," then it is not only software but textbooks, newspapers, the
contents of all libraries that should be free.

Also all the lectures given by all the professors.  Shucks, it's just
information and ideas, it should be free.

And consulting ought to be free, too.  After all, if I need information
and expertise that I don't have, to make a better product, that will make
the world a better place, and you have that expertise, you ought to be
morally bound to provide it.  Free, of course, it's just information.

The real blind spot of the Free Whatever Foundation is a failure, or a
refusal, to recognize that there is some value-added in the reduction
of an algorithm to practice, in the correlation, organization, and
exposition of the information in a textbook, in the interpretation of
raw data into comprehensible presentations in editorial content of
publications.

And that the QUALITY of the effort to organize/reduce to practice/
interpret the raw data is quite variable, and depends on talent and
sweat.  As soon as you concede that not everyone can do the job
equally well, and that there is a cost associated with handling
information effectively, economic and political forces inevitably arise
that tend to assign the most talented practitioners to the most
"critical" needs.  If ANYBODY could write a Lotus, or a Feynman
lecture, on the first draft, there'd be little market pressure to
reward the better authors.

Like democracy, the market is the worst method for making sure quality
products are available -- except for all the others.  If you want to
donate your time and talent to a good cause, you have my admiration.
But that is YOUR choice.  You do not have the right to dictate that I,
too, am morally obligated to donate my time and effort.  And you
certainly don't have the right to impose your morality on me, nor to justify
stealing the fruits of my labor because, by your lights, I should have
given them away anyway.  I own my labor, and I will set the price of my
labor; YOU can take it, negotiate it WITH ME, or leave it, or go into
competition.  If you steal it, it is YOU who are morally bankrupt.

=Ned Horvath=