I've not seen the book, but I have bought books before on subjects that were covered by free resources online. Books, I'm sure, are a good idea:
1: There is a lot of free stuff available out there on the Internet - a printed book, by an author or three, provides a handy reference to the most relevant material. This is something you can pick up and use. The wiki, on the other hand, has a lot of good stuff, but also a great deal of cruft. If it's not on the wiki, you may find yourself managing reams of bookmarks to the thing you need. A book can provide an edited relief to this. 2: A book provides a historiography: It says something about the opinions of the people that wrote it. If you value the opinions of the authors, you should consider buying the book. 3: A printed book on a subject that "is available online" will invariably teach you something new about the subject. The thing it teaches you may be online, for free, already, but I would bet money that there's something "new" in the book that you haven't seen. 4: Books can go into University libraries and onto GIS course reading lists. A big one, I would imagine, for OSM. Perhaps we should ask why, in this Internet age, do we need newpapers, TV, radio and pubs? Can't all these things be replaced by Google News, YouTube, Spotify and IRC? Books are a massively positive thing - they demonstrate a healthy and productive OSM ecosystem and a growth in adoption. More books please! Cheers, Joseph On 16 September 2010 00:38, Dave F. <dave...@madasafish.com> wrote: > On 15/09/2010 19:39, Steve Chilton wrote: >> >> "OpenStreetMap: Using, and Contributing to, the Free World Map" >> (Paperback, in English) by Ramm/Topf/Chilton will be available in 5 days. >> Pre-order at discount http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781906860110/ >> > > Apologies for living in the real world, but why do I need a highly priced > printed book for information that is, or should be, available to all *free* > of charge on line (apart from internet charges, obviously) for a *free* & > *open* crowd-sourcing project such as OSM? > > Regards > Dave F. > > _______________________________________________ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk