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The entitlement of your post is out of control, and you're making a lot of assumptions in what is really just a knee-jerk reaction to someone, somewhere making money.

> 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.

> They were never incentivized to improve the official manual in the first place.

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.

Well, jgrahamc did post a link (http://blog.jgc.org/2013/02/updated-list-of-my-gnu-make-arti...) to 38 articles that provide free information on GNU Make usage. Reading his post suggests that the new book is a properly edited and formatted edition of the older book with the same content updated to Make 4.0.

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?

I do not get the impression that the “The GNU Make Book” has any substantial similarity with the freely available “Ask Mr. Make” articles – I get the impression that the book is a wholly new work, aimed at being a general manual for GNU Make. The title is especially clear in giving me this impression, but also the text describing the book on its home page gives me no reason to doubt my conclusion.

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.

Why would any software program be limited to one book which tries to serve all possible audiences? This is never the case with commercial software. Why would free software be limited to one book? Different audiences have different needs and they are free to vote for the authors who meet their unique needs.

There are certainly good arguments for the existence of books for specialized purposes and audiences, like, say, “Python for Data Scientists”. However, this case was simply about “if you really want to get into make deeply”, and for that specific purpose I would think that the obvious thing to do would be first to go to the GNU Make official manual.

What a shitty argument. On the contrary, the fact that somebody writes a non-free book about a piece of software that comes with a free manual with the expectation that he can actually compete with the free manual tells you much about the quality of the free manual. Everything else is just normal, healthy competition in a free market.

You seem to pre-suppose that all-rights-reserverd copyright on a manual for a free software program is OK. I do not agree, mainly for the reasons outlined here:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html

No, I don't. I merely think that having a free manual and a non-free alternative to it is perfectly fine, because the user will decide which one they pick. No need to force any kind of specific ideology upon anyone.

On the subject of unofficial manuals and guides, people has been sued under copyright and trademark for writing and selling them (http://news.cnet.com/Warcraft-maker-sued-for-blocking-sales-...).

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-...)

Correction: Blizzard+Vivendi filed DMCA takedown notices to prevent sales. The writer of the guides sued Blizzard+Vivendi for filing invalid DMCA takedown notices and won http://lawvibe.com/world-of-warcraft-ebook-seller-wins-case-... .

Title-wise on jgrahamc's book, that's a different discussion, and completely unrelated to the link you provided.

The copyright argument does not seem very plausible, and regarding your linked example: Unofficial guides and such should really be allowed, and I don’t see any consensus forming around disallowing them.

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?

Agree, except that the underpinning is about about the freedom to improve and share, which generally means there's a freely available version on the internet, but by no means means you can't or shouldn't buy electronic or paper copies for money to support the author. ie. the gnu make manual: http://shop.fsf.org/product/gnu-make-version-381/