RE: The Baen library

From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Thu Dec 19 2002 - 04:29:12 MST


On Wed, 18 Dec 2002, Damien Broderick wrote:

> I passed along this criticism to Steve Pendergrast at F/wise, who comments
> by way of rebuttal:
>
> > We support more
> > formats than any other major ebook distributor by far. People come to

"More" is not better. Baen free library while not offering .TXT at least
offers gzipped HTML and RTF, which both can be exported into .TXT.

> > us to buy ebooks that are also in the Baen Free library because we
> > have formats Baen doesn't even support.

Again the 'more is better' fallacy. It doesn't matter how many proprietary
formats he supports, as long as he supports the basic open ones.

> > Our formats are the most commonly used industry standard eBook formats
> > there are: Microsoft Reader, Palm Doc, Adobe Acrobat, Palmreader,
> > Rocket ... anyone who thinks these are bizzare and uncommon formats

Ah, I thought so. Proprietary formats, all about them. I bet their Adobe
Acrobat is encrypted, too, or comes as bitmap.

> > doesn't know anything about ebooks! Now consider the formats Baen
> > supports: Microsoft Reader, Palm Doc, Adobe Acrobat, Rocket... you see
> > what I mean? The formats we carry are just about exactly the same as

Yes, I see what he means. By conveniently omitting HTML and RTF he shows
that he's a proprietary bastard, and is blowing heavy smoke assuming his
target audience (you here) is too naive to notice it. Not good, Steve.

> > the ones Baen carries. I think they have straight HTML but we could
> > not get publishers to agree to that one. But other than that they're

Right, and this is what makes Baen's offering so exceptional (along with
RTF).

> > mostly the same formats.
> >
> > It's true that some ebooks we carry are encrypted, but only ones for
> > which the publishers absolutely will not allow unencrypted versions.
> > So, it was a choice to carry them encrypted or not at all. We would
> > prefer not to encrypt them but that's not a legal option.

Okay, he doesn't seem to be actively evil.
 
> I have never bought one of their downloads myself (since I don't own a Palm
> or equivalent), but the e-books I've seen from them are perfectly readable
> on Adobe Acrobat freeware.



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