Why's (poignant) guide to Ruby | Hacker News Reader

Why's (poignant) guide to Ruby

amazon.com

30 pointsmasterminding15 comments

Considering _why's infocide several years ago and the fact that this book has been available online for free, it seems like somebody is simply trying to make money off of his free book. I've reported it to Amazon as fraudulent, and I urge anybody reading this to do the same!

Looks like the book is under a free license: CC-BY-SA. Printing it and selling it is allowed.

True, except for the fact that the author is claiming to be him. Indeed, it's a pseudonym, so arguably up for grabs, but a misrepresentation even so.

Well, isn't the author _why? I don't think publishers typically identify themselves as "authors" on Amazon.

I'm reminded of that time when the UK police were cracking down on people selling Mozilla CDs:

http://slashdot.org/story/06/02/23/1330220/uk-government-con...

The author is _why, isn't he? It would be misrepresentation to claim otherwise. The person making money here is the person who submitted to Createspace, who is effectively the publisher (along with Createspace as well)

If this is _why then there's no need for that and we should, in fact, be supportive of someone who gave to much to the community and buy the book.

The odds that's actually _why are pretty low.

CreateSpace? This looks like someone other than _why is trying to make money from his work.

Does it contain the same content as this: https://github.com/mislav/poignant-guide

What's the difference between the Red book [1] and the Black book [2]?

1: http://www.amazon.com/whys-poignant-guide-Ruby-color/dp/1512...

2: http://www.amazon.com/whys-poignant-guide-lucky-stiff/dp/151...

"why's (poignant) guide to Ruby: in color" is in color, the other one is not.

Is this really a complete post when it's just a link to buy a book off Amazon.

if it's really him, than we should support him

Is he back?

I don't think so. This feels very inconsistent with his approach.

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