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Comment by Einherji | Hacker News Reader

I bought the "beta" edition of the book and really enjoyed it so far. I think it covers different topics than the free django book and I absolutely think they are both valuable resources. On a related note, I always seem to get more out of books that I payed for, similar to how expensive wine always tastes better. Anyone else experience this?

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You may get more out of things you paid for because you do not want that money to have been wasted, similar to how the same wine is rated better if it is more expensive (in blind tests).

Sorry for being a jerk, but did you pay for Django?

Like many people, I 'paid' for Django via contributions of my time.

I agree 100%. Django may be free to use but lots of people contribute their time to to project. When I have enough experience working with it I plan to give back to the community as much as I can, that is how I will pay for django.

No, but a lot of companies did by paying people to work on Django projects, and allowing contributions back into the Free project?

I've not heard of any companies (except some colleges) funding actual books in a similar way -- probably because if you pay someone to improve Django, your product (based on Django) improves, and you presumably make money from your product.

Paying someone to write general documentation helps train both your and other's developers -- but the link to profit is more indirect -- writing proper text books is not something that makes sense to in-source for most institutions (shorter tutorials, technical documentation etc, being something different).

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