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=