[blatant advertising] And also I have a new book on GNU make coming out this month: http://www.nostarch.com/gnumake if you really want to get into make deeply.
Anyone who writes their own, not freely available, manual to a free software program, is dividing the world into two halves: Those readers who can afford this new book, and will pay the author (not the writers of the software, mind you) for a nice manual, and those readers who can’t afford to pay for this new manual, and will have to do with the inferior¹ official manual. Those readers who can afford the new manual will not be incentivised to improve the official manual, since they have the new, better, one. Therefore, this act (of creating new manuals which are not freely available) is reducing the number of readers who can be expected to help improve the official manual to those readers who cannot afford the new manual. These effects, i.e. reduced funding and reduced help to the original software authors, is not, to me, worth it to have a new, even if better, manual.
① Presumably, by their own standards, since they wrote a replacement manual.
> If anyone wants to get into GNU Make deeply, one would think that the obvious thing to do would be to read the official manual for GNU Make.
There is a lot of room for both "user guide" type publications in addition to the official manual. In particular the former may be useful to individuals who have had difficulty learning how to use make from other resources. Are you saying that all of the "Learning Basic Linux" books should be pulled since people can just read the Linux manuals?
> and will pay the author [of the manual] (not the writers of the software, mind you) for a nice manual
You act as if writing a manual is somehow a less valuable act than writing the software, when in fact high-quality documentation is sorely lacking in almost all parts of the free software world.
I doubt you have ever written, edited, and had published a book before, because even for something as "simple" as a guide to a software tool, it is an intense, laborious process that involves lots of research and fact-checking in addition to the actual writing and editing. Its incredibly entitled to suggest that all of this effort should not be compensated at the author's discretion.
> Those readers who can afford the new manual will not be incentivised to improve the official manual, since they have the new, better, one.
They were never incentivized to improve the official manual in the first place.
> reduced funding and reduced help to the original software authors
There was no expectation of funding to the original software authors in the first place, and to imply that they deserve the money for what would be spent on this book, a separate creative work, is disingenuous.
On the contrary, if they had read the official manual, they would have had the incentive to improve it. Just like with software.
> There was no expectation of funding to the original software authors in the first place
Yes there is, if the original software authors are (like in the case of GNU Make) also selling the official manual in book form.
Copyright law is pretty crappy on the whole, but jgrahamc did write the articles and has been giving them away for free. Why is it unreasonable for him to package, edit, update, and release them years after they were written, with the originals still available for free?
Anyway, whatever other good things jgrahamc may have done is immaterial, since I was not only speaking about him, but also about the general case and its consequences. Also, I did not say it was “unreasonable” of anyone to do this. I said that when anyone does something like what jgrahamc did, they take away some unknown amount of human and monetary resources from the authors of the actual software and the official manual, and I don’t think that this drawback is worth it to have a new & improved, but non-freely licenced, manual.
Since the title is "the GNU make book", a consumer could easily mistakes the book as made by the author of GNU make or/and published by the GNU project.
Edit: Missread the article. It was blizzard that got sued for filling the DMCA, not the other way around. A more relevant article is the Harry Potter Lexicon case where a guide to the harry potter works was deemed not protection by fair use. (http://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/8243/can-anybody-...)
Title-wise on jgrahamc's book, that's a different discussion, and completely unrelated to the link you provided.
Your point about trademarks is much more interesting, though; how many people have paid money for this “The GNU Make Book”, thinking that they have somehow supported the GNU Make project? Isn’t this exactly what trademarks are supposed to prevent?
Like, can't we just get into a little make, and call it square?
(Disclaimer; Mr GC is totally not paying me to ask this)
If you are one of the few who bought the old one then it might not be worth buying the new one.
But this book does have exactly 2^8 pages :-)