
"Please take this down and write your own book." - bobbywilson0
https://github.com/martinemde/learn-ruby-the-hard-way/issues/1
======
jasonkester
This is a good illustration of how tone doesn't come across well in writing.
Reading the comment by the original author, it sounded like a friendly request
to please take the content down.

The guy whose site it was clearly didn't see it that way and responded as
though he'd been viscously attacked. He ends up coming across as quite angry,
when more likely he was just rattled and feeling defensive.

I guess the takeaway is to always take a step back before responding when you
feel attacked. Chances are you're not being attacked nearly as harshly as you
think.

~~~
kenjackson
The problem with Zed's response, IMO, is the end. Where he says to the guy to
have some class and use his own words.

While I completely get what Zed is saying about asking permission. I don't
think that "porting" a book is lacking class. It may turn out to be a futile
effort, but in many ways I saw it as a tribute and maybe learning exercise. It
would be a blast to do SICP in Java. For Java programmers the process of
writing, and for others reading such a book would be a valuable experience.

I think if Zed would have just said:

"Hi, my book isn't public domain. You can't modify and redist w/o permission.
And unfortunately, I don't think Ruby is the type of language you can just
drop in as a replacement for Python. You may get the result to work, but it'll
be suboptimal for Ruby and may even make my original text look worse as a
result.

Ther eare some people working on a clean room version with Ruby. If you're
interested, I'd be happy to make an introduction for you. Again, I'll have to
ask you to cease using my text for this project, but hopefully you can create
a great Ruby book in some other manner." Or something similar, the result
would have been a more civil dialog.

~~~
pmjordan
I doubt that would have helped. Being caught infringing on someone's copyright
is embarrassing to say the least. Embarrassment and being given advice, no
matter how well-meaning, will often not go down well. In fact, many people get
extra annoyed when you're nice about this sort of thing.

I think Zed's initial approach was a close approximation of the best way to
handle this. Although I probably would have left it at the original notice and
then a mere "thanks for taking it down". (speaking as someone who has no
emotional involvement in the situation, anyway. Who knows how I would have
reacted to that level of abuse)

~~~
kenjackson
I disagree. Frankly many people don't understand copyright law. Ask average
Joe on the street what is Fair Use and most people don't have a clue. The Ruby
guy didn't seem to know he was violating Fair Use, if so he likely wouldn't
have called "Learn Ruby the Hard Way", and probably would make it more
difficult to find for people that read the Python version, especially the
author himself.

And I think if you couple that with the Hacker ethos and the way code licenses
in our space usually exist (BSD, Apache, MIT, GPL, etc...) taking copyright
material, modifying, and redisting, with attribution is usually fair game. Now
such a tradition doesn't exist in the book market, but again, I'm not sure if
a lot of people know that.

Note, if the book he was writing was a parody of Zed's book, he may be
protected by Fair Use law.

In any case, all this points to the fact that he made an innocent mistake. And
what I've discovered is that people who make these types of mistakes, while
embarrassed, usually are deferential, unless personally attacked ("only an
idiot can do something so stupid").

~~~
pmjordan
Speculation about interpretation and motives notwithstanding:

Not knowing the ins and outs of copyright law and licensing is neither excuse
nor reason to blow up at a takedown request. Innocent mistake or not.

The parody and citation exemptions would presumably not allow verbatim lifting
of large sections of prose, though. (presumably hence "may")

Based on the thread following the initial reaction they probably both owe each
other an apology.

------
voodootikigod
The worst part of this situation is how martinemde is portending himself to be
a "translator" like from English to Spanish, ignorant of the fact that you
even need permission to do that. <http://twitter.com/martinemde>

Also its pretty crappy how the Ruby Protection Squad came to his rescue with
blind hate for Zed throwing comments like "Wow didn't even know who Zed Shaw
was, now the first thing I learned about him is that he's a total d-bag" -
<http://twitter.com/PeteTheSadPanda/status/598669095084033>

Yes Zed doesn't always say things gently, but what he did say was 100% truth.
Regardless of if you like what he says you have to respect 1. the truth and 2.
who was really in the wrong here.

Final note: this guy could have buried it by just deleting the whole repo, but
left it up to seem like the "martyr" - that is what kills me the most.

~~~
brown9-2
I think your first point here is excellent, but do we really need to care
about what some random (as far as I can tell) Twitter user thinks about Zed?
On the Internet you can find a negative comment about anyone by someone,
somewhere.

------
joshuacc
Interestingly, Martin has now updated the readme
<https://github.com/martinemde/learn-ruby-the-hard-way#readme>

He concedes both of Zed's main points:

1\. That he didn't have a legal right to "translate" the book

2\. That "translating" the book from Python to Ruby didn't work all that well
anyway

The rest of the message boils down to a complaint that Zed wasn't nice enough
in his takedown request. While Zed could have phrased things more nicely, he
wasn't especially rude given the context of clear plagiarism and copyright
violation.

~~~
16s
Not nice? He could have sent a settlement offer... pay me X dollars for
damaging my reputation as an author and I will promise not to sue you. Some
may argue that Zed was not "damaged" by this juvenile act, but a good lawyer
would have no problem proving damage if push came to shove.

~~~
kenjackson
I suppose the bar for Microsoft will now be that they didn't impose the
harshest legal remedy against you, and since they didn't they're a charitable
company? Unlikely, people are praising them for not fining them $30k per copy
of Windows/Office made illegally.

~~~
Semiapies
If a company's "DRM" policy were simply to contact offenders and tell them to
stop being dicks, I think folks would love it.

------
mathgladiator
At some level, you have to love zed. He gives and gives to the world, and the
world just craps on him.

Of course, I have a feeling that his personal brand isn't going to be helped
by this exchange.

~~~
Loic
Zed has principles and follow them. His personal brand (I don't like the term,
but I am not a native English speaker and have difficulties to come up with
better) is not going to suffer, the opposite. He is just requesting respect
for his work and the basic copy rights to be followed.

I like people with principles.

~~~
crux_
I don't like the term either. Reputation is a nice substitute, although it
lacks the connotations of treating a person as though they were a corporation-
style entity with a marketing department.

... which, come to think of it, is one of the reasons I hate the phrase
"personal brand."

------
rubyrescue
"I'm a fucking Engine Yard programmer for fuck sake." - what an arrogant
statement.

~~~
scott_s
I read it not as "I'm an amazing programmer because I work for Engine Yard,"
but "I work for a company that clearly depends on your work - I respect what
you've done."

~~~
pjscott
On behalf of everyone who tries to communicate over the internet, I'd like to
thank you for assuming the nicer interpretation. It's easy to misinterpret
someone's tone, and written communication goes so much more smoothly when
people avoid making angry assumptions.

~~~
Semiapies
I'm not sure "Hey, I write stuff using your software, you should tolerate my
mistreatment of you better!" is a nicer interpretation.

~~~
aplusbi
No, but the "Hey I write stuff using your software, I never meant to mistreat
you." is.

------
brettbender
Love the entitlement evident in his reply, "I'm a fucking Engine Yard
programmer for fuck sake. We promote mongrel as a stable deployment stack" -
does he think the fact that they promote zed's work means it's okay to ignore
zed's rights regarding his own work?

Also, how could anyone take issue with the maintainer of
<https://github.com/martinemde/dicks> and <http://dicks.heroku.com> ?

~~~
parfe
I don't think irony is the right word, but I got a good chuckle out of this
martimeemde guy.

He is quite literally the embodiment of why zed left ruby. Someone profiting
from Zed's work on mongrel yet at the same time giving Zed shit. Zed wrote a
Python book and explicitly said it shouldn't be ported to Ruby. Then this ruby
guy comes along and misappropriates the book and then whines that Zed isn't
giving him enough for free.

~~~
steveklabnik
> Zed wrote a Python book and explicitly said it shouldn't be ported to Ruby.

Just to make it clear, Zed said that his book shouldn't be 'ported' to
_anything_. An inspired work based on Ruby already exists, by
@krainboltgreene, and Zed is aware and supportive.

------
mcknz
But honestly Zed, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be
happy I just didn't "lift" your whole book and put my name on it!

~~~
swannodette
I hope sarcasm is intended here, if so- that's funny.

~~~
mcknz
Thought it interesting how absurd the "Monica" situation seems, yet we often
engage in essentially the same behavior ourselves.

That just doesn't sound as good on a bumper sticker.

EDIT: clarification

~~~
ay
Monica was the original author - did you mean to write the name of that lady
who is (was?) with the Cooks Source ?

------
mdonahoe
Interesting. On the page about the book[1], Zed also links to How To Think
Like a Computer Scientist, another popular book for learning Python.

Allen Downey was the first author on that book, but initially he wrote it in
Java:

"I released the book under the GNU Free Documentation License, which allows
users to copy, modify, and distribute the book.

What happened next is the cool part. Jeff Elkner, a high school teacher in
Virginia, adopted my book and translated it into Python. He sent me a copy of
his translation, and I had the unusual experience of learning Python by
reading my own book."[2]

It's funny that the same thing is happening here, but Zed has a very different
reaction than Allen's.

[1]: <http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index> [2]:
<http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/book001.html>

~~~
JshWright
It would only be "the same thing" if Zed chose to release his content under
the GNU Free Documentation License, which he did not.

It's his content, and he can do with it what he choses. If he doesn't want
folks to "copy, modify, and distribute" his content, that's fine with me (not
that it matters, since it's _his_ content).

~~~
jpcx01
Really? You see no similarities between these 2 cases?

I only see one big difference. One author cares about only himself and his own
little world

~~~
JshWright
I'm not even sure this is worth replying to, but what the heck...

Zed has absolutely no moral obligation to write stuff for free and release it
for anyone to do whatever they want with. Do you express the same moral
outrage over every book in the library with a copyright notice printed on it?

I surely hope that every piece of code and content that you ever create is
released under a license that allows anyone to do what they please with it,
otherwise... you don't have a moral leg to stand on.

~~~
jpcx01
Thank you for the lesson in morality.

------
rflrob
Regardless of whether Zed's tone in the first post was too harsh or not, I
think everything from "Guys like you are the reason I stopped doing Ruby"
onwards was just fanning the flames unnecessarily.

------
charlief
This was originally posted by martinemde looking for support and then flagged
down here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1873881>

~~~
rbanffy
_"I messaged you on Twitter and contacted you by email to try to give you
knowledge of it. I was quite public about doing it as a _why day project. I
made a good faith effort to let you know what I was working on. I even knew
you were working on having a learn code the hard way thing and I wanted to
contribute but there's no clear outline of your goals or how you expect people
to contribute. This is my understanding of what you'd expect for
contribution."_

I tend to support the martinemde here. It seems he tried contact and was
ignored. As much as Zed's coding skills are respected (I never looked into his
code myself, but I trust my peers) I have to wonder if they are worth his
toxicity.

"have some class", "guys like you are the reason I stopped doing Ruby", "Ruby
hippie"... Come on...

~~~
tvon
> It seems he tried contact and was ignored.

I don't think silence is consent in this case. The whole thing seems like an
obviously bad idea to me...

~~~
rbanffy
I suppose most programmers find it better to ask for forgiveness then for
permission.

~~~
Semiapies
Whether or not that's true, programmers who go for that approach need to be
good at apologizing.

~~~
rbanffy
Zed over-reacted. Whatever harm martinemde did to Zed's book is close to
nothing. Martinemde took down the derived book as soon as he got the request
from Zed, who, while saying "please", also accompanied it with a couple
insults.

~~~
Semiapies
Part of being good at apologizing is sucking it up and accepting anger from
the people you piss off.

Don't go the "better to ask forgiveness" route if you're unwilling to accept
some grief.

~~~
rbanffy
An equally important part is to refrain from doing it when you think the other
part would be gravely offended. As Martin explained, he was paying homage to
Zed. Instead of trying to understand the reasons someone would like to homage
him, Zed insulted Martin.

When I ask someone to take down a plagiarized version of something I wrote (it
happens) I usually point out I do not license the material on my site. I don't
call people names not I insult them - I just point out they shouldn't do it
and urge them to take the content down because it's not fine with me they
reuse it. Even that is rare - I am usually happy with adequate attribution.

I can't understand why someone talented as Zed feels a need to insult people.
But that's me and I am not like him.

~~~
Semiapies
" _An equally important part is to refrain from doing it_ "

No, that would be closer to the "asking permission" philosophy.

~~~
rbanffy
It's better to ask for forgiveness, but asking permission, when feasible _and_
practical (Zed ignored the guy, after all) is nice.

~~~
Semiapies
So the steps you really suggest are:

1) Ask permission.

2) If you don't get permission, do it anyway.

3) Complain and berate the people you crossed if you suffer consequences from
doing it anyway.

Gah. I think I've had quite enough of talking with you.

~~~
rbanffy
Not exactly.

1- ask for permission

2- if you don't get an answer, assume the subject is not that important to the
person you asked

3- Do it

4- If person who ignored you denies you permission retroactively, comply

5- Complain when the person who ignored you and then denied you permission to
do what you already did, which you promptly removed from public access, also
insults you for no reason beyond not getting his attention in the first place.

I think that covers it very thoroughly.

------
Jabbles
Drama!

Seriously though, everyone should be aware that "free as in beer" and "free as
in speech" are not the same thing. And they should be aware of which case
applies.

------
martinemde
Please see the README on the front page of the project with my update.

<https://github.com/martinemde/learn-ruby-the-hard-way>

I've calmed a bit since the original postings. I can see why he was upset and
I know that the right thing to do was to remove the book. I had good
intentions and I did this out of homage, not to steal or claim any credit.

I've always been a fan of Zed's work. I will continue to be despite getting
defensive about this.

~~~
Semiapies
This update would be better without the remaining defensiveness, but it is a
much less wrong response.

I'm bewildered, though, at your saying that you're surprised at all the
attention this has received _when you've tried to publicize this incident_.

~~~
martinemde
I found the whole incident rather funny. Zed published a post about the issue,
I published the issue since Zed didn't link it. I've never submitted to Hacker
News and figured it'd get buried. I didn't expect top story on hacker news.

------
16s
Zed should have sent a DMCA notice to github.

~~~
16s
<http://help.github.com/dmca/>

For some reason can't edit my original comment. So replied to myself.

~~~
Semiapies
After a certain period of time, you can't edit a comment you've made. Not sure
of the exact period.

------
sequoia
I think Zed's approach reflects an attitude like 'I shouldn't have to hold
your hand re:copyright.'

I'm guessing Zed's rancor isn't _just_ about this incident, but the 'net-wide
confusion about copyright vs cc copyright vs gpl vs whatever, particularly
among the newer generation of web developers (like me). I am sympathetic to
his feeling of "I shouldn't even have to tell you this."

~~~
Semiapies
Agreed, and I think it's a justified rancor. There are some things you're
expected to know as a literate person in this day and time, and some guy can't
just expect his ignoring them to be covered with a shrug and a "my bad" when
he's called on it.

------
meemo
There's faults on both sides. The guy is clearly in the wrong by failing to
follow the copyright restrictions, but it was probably an honest mistake.
Since he's spending to much time on the book, he's probably a fan of Zed's
work. And he may be thinking he's adding value to the book. On the other side,
Zed was completely within his rights to ask the guy to take repository down,
but didn't need to make any assumptions about the guy's intentions or "class".

------
darklajid
For me the most interesting part was reading this, pondering about text as
medium that lacks a lot of - erm - subtext _and_ I guess it's especially
interesting if english is not your native language. That by itself usually
leads to "wait a minute, what is the author trying to say here" moments more
often.

What I mean: Write german and I tend to interpret a lot more - I assume that I
_know_ the language really well and therefor just _know_ what you're trying to
say here. Maybe it's an advantage to read most of my internet stuff in
english: Less "Someone's wrong on the internet" moments and more "Did I get
this right" reflection.

On-Topic: I respect Zed's work, tried the book recently and liked that quite a
lot either. I do wonder if the tone was necessary though: Except for the "WTF?
I didn't _meant_ to violate copyright" I couldn't read anything insulting in
the author's comments, while "lacking class" and "I left ruby because of
people like you" is - personal.

Yes, it was wrong. Others commented that he could even hired a lawyer
(seriously? For a no-profit, partly done, public github project? Overkill?),
but I really think this could've been solved in private, easily, without much
hassle.

For me, for the most part, the original author sounds/reads like a real,
authentic (ex-?) fan of Zed..

~~~
tommorris
I call bullshit. Text can be perfectly expressive, in fact often more
expressive than other media. You just need to be able to write well - and
e-mail has exposed us on a daily basis to the fact that most people haven't
figured out how to write and communicate very well.

Obligatory plug - I wrote about this recently:
[http://blog.tommorris.org/post/1307196373/im-getting-
absolut...](http://blog.tommorris.org/post/1307196373/im-getting-absolutely-
bored-of-this-tired-and)

~~~
darklajid
Nice way to promote your own blog.

Quote: "Do the people who propose these theories not get letters in the post?
Do they not send each other Christmas cards?:

See - that's the part that shows that you fail to understand the problem. At
all. I can send my mum, my SO or my brother short notices - and they will get
what I mean. Because they already know me. They know my style of talking, my
sense of humor and my way to argue. I'm not going to send you a christmas card
over the internet, without previous encounters.

See - if you present this text of yours here, I'm lost. Are you _serious_
about that "bullshit"? I'm not sure. I don't know you and it doesn't make much
sense to me. Either you are serious and we have to disagree a lot and I just
don't (so far) get what your problem with my position is, or you just make a
joke. Maybe you are chuckling in your chair and just want to spread some HN
link love. Maybe you actually DO believe that emotions and intents are clearly
visible in text.

If the last point is true I wonder if you had any classes/lessons where you
were told to determine the authors intention - and if you have enough
confidence to claim that yes, you knew _exactly_ what Mark Twain was trying to
tell you in each of his books.

Er - I guess that was a long way to say: I call bullshit on both your
argumentation and your motives. Feel free to read this with the image of me
being amused, bewildered, confused, angry, annoyed or just neutral. Have fun.

~~~
tommorris
I don't believe that emotions and intent are clearly visible in text. You have
to put them in there. That's why you have to learn to write.

If we expect to have an economy of so-called 'knowledge workers' who thrive on
the basis of knowing stuff and communicating that to people as and when
required, decent writing skills seems a pretty damn important thing to have.
Instead, we don't teach people to write properly (and people don't seem to
aspire to learn writing) then we wonder why they can't write properly and
their e-mails don't communicate the message they are trying to convey.

I'm saying that we shouldn't blame e-mail or technology because some people
are crap at writing e-mail any more than we should blame Flickr and Facebook
for people being crap at photography.

When someone can't communicate online excuses like "e-mail lacks visual cues"
are just that - excuses.

~~~
darklajid
It is interesting that the highest voted thread at this point in time starts
with "This is a good illustration of how tone doesn't come across well in
writing." - and yet you don't call bullshit there, you do it here.

What you call for - as far as I can understand it - is a norm, a way to
measure quality for texts. I say that this isn't realistically possible.

This works for people you know (easily, they can grok what you wanted to say).
It might work for peers (they understand where you coming from, share some
experiences and might know what you want to get at). In general, it doesn't
work at all.

Things you completely ignore:

\- Language: My first post started with the difference between reading in your
native language and a foreign one. Depending on your readers understanding of
your language you cannot transport your intentions in a reliable way. A smile,
on the other hand, goes a long way to show that you are not actually mocking
him/her and are a friendly person. Good luck, trying to make that universal.

\- Feedback You can write a loooong text about a subject and cause me to
explode when I read that midway through. If you tell me the same story face to
face, you could probably read my expressions (depending again on context, how
familiar we are, if you pay attention etc.) and navigate around some hurdles.
You really want to tell a nice story about the Iraq war but notice how my mood
turned darker? Good chance to ask me about my opinion and to take it slowly.
How do you solve that in a text based conversation? Right.

\- Context/Previous knowledge: You can talk about things I have no clue about,
rather easily. Depending on your attitude and style of writing I might feel
excluded, maybe offended, although it's entirely my fault. Face to face you
could be Prince Charming. Without that and any knowledge of your readers
schooling/education/knowledge, how are you going to make sure that you don't
accidently embarass them?

I don't blame email or technology. The problem isn't new either. As long as
we've been able to communicate in writing first, without knowing the other
person, this problem existed. It's not about "emails". Neither about
"technology sucks". It's about "words, without more context (previous
encounters, a similar character, a shared history), don't carry the full
information".

For me it's like a blurred image. If I know the thing that is depicted, I can
clearly recognize it. If not, it's guesswork. You can try and make it easier,
by blowing up your text to explain as much as possible and to try to (and
fail) solve any ambiguous meaning, but in the end I'm still lost. On the
recipients end, I have to rely on my information alone to understand what
information you want to provide.

I have some good friends that are blind. In your world, they wouldn't miss
that much even outside of online conversations: The text carries all the
meaning, right? Nuances of the voice? Nice, but not necessary if the author is
disciplined. Making faces, smiling etc.? Hey, you don't need that.

Are you really, really serious?

And you say "you have to learn how to write", when I say that reading is the
part where the problem occurs? Can you really write "for everyone"? I'd argue
that so far you cannot write for me, I'm still unsure if you are just trying
to contine this discussion in a productive way (hints are some writing related
parts of the comment, imo) or if you just want to talk me down (most of the
comment, imo).

See 1, 2 and 3 and check if you actually _can_ write clear enough for
everybody out there.

(FWIW: I used "me" and "I" in this text as a general replacement for "you" and
"one", i.e. just examples. In addition, all examples are completely artifical
as well and you cannot guess my feelings/viewpoints from this comment)

------
JanezStupar
This is Zeeed Shaaaaw!!!

I have never met the guy, but I surely hope that I get the privilege some day,
even if he just picks on me and tells me that my work is worthless piece of
junk and that if it implodes in a second it would be a service to the world -
because that might be single most insightful and sincere analysis one might
receive.

Kudos to anyone with a pair, that is capable of speaking their mind in today's
"politically correct" world ridden with hypocrisy.

~~~
citricsquid
Like it or not Zed is entirely right here. It's his work, the guy had no
permission, it has nothing to do with being "politically correct" it has
everything to do with no being a dick and respecting a persons ownership and
the effort they put into something. Whether or not Zed is the biggest dick in
the world is irrelevant.

~~~
Semiapies
Absolutely. It's one thing to take issue with the tone of someone voicing an
opinion or reacting to your opinion, but it's another to whine that someone's
not being friendly when he's telling you to _stop stealing his work_.

------
sp4rki
Why are a lot of people missing stuff like this: "have some class and use your
own words and write your own book" and this "Guys like you are the reason I
stopped doing Ruby"?

I agree with Zed that the idea was borderline useless since both languages
have their ways and a direct translation lacks focus anyway. I also agree that
it's Zed's work, and he granted use of his work with a license which doesn't
allow this type of derivate work. Zed was totally in the right here, and
Martin was totally in the wrong.

That being said, that doesn't automagically grant Zed the right to be a douche
and insult the guy, specially since not only he complied with Zed's request,
but tries to explain that he did so in good faith. There's no 'tone' here, it
was obviously an insulting and condescending attack towards Martin. A simple
"Hey what you're doing is not permitted by my license, take it down" or
"You're infringing my copyright, take this down" would have been more than
enough. The reality is that Zed loves to pick a fight and demean people, and
in this case Martin made a mistake in good faith and did not deserve such
disdain.

~~~
Semiapies
When you act in a classless way, whether that's making fart noises in a
restaurant or plagiarizing someone's work, you risk the pain of being told to
act with more class.

~~~
sp4rki
Two things:

1) It was not plagiarizing, it was copyright infringement, and they are both
not mutually inclusive and are completely different. Martin didn't appropriate
the content or idea of the book and called it his own, he publish the start of
an attempt of a 'book hack' stating the original author and intent.

2) Do you equate fart noises with a person making a mistake in the name of
providing something useful to the community? The dude made a mistake, a
mistake that in no way reflects on his amount of class, but does reflect on
his drive to provide something useful to the Open Source community. Sure he
should be corrected, as he did make a mistake, but he should not be degraded
in any way as has been done in this case.

PD: Who has more class, the person who farts in a restaurant, or the person
that calls him on it publicly without knowing the reasons for him doing it and
does so with intent to degrade such person?

~~~
Semiapies
You're trying to wrap all this up in justifications of what he did this "in
the name of".

How someone justifies something like this is irrelevant. The basic rule for
material, absent an explicit other license, is copyright. Shaw is generous
enough to offer a less restrictive license, but that license is clear on its
terms. To ignore the license given on a work, whether it's copyright, some CC
non-commercial variant, GPL, or _whatever_ is indeed a classless act.

And if you want to linger on "providing something useful", Zed has pointed out
and Martin acknowledged that this approach is _not useful_ for advancing Ruby
education. (For that matter, it was a dead project.) Shaw has now provided a
guide on how to make a book of this style at
<http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1288945508.html>

Also, it's "make fart noises", not "fart". As in deliberately make a noise
considered rude. Copying and pasting a book and putting it in a public
repository isn't a semi-voluntary bodily function.

~~~
sp4rki
For starters, I'm not justifying anything Martin did, as I never said he was
right in any way, don't try to put words in mouth. As a matter of fact, I
agreed on the following: 1) Zed has every right to complain due to his
copyright and the license which his work carries 2) What Martin did was wrong,
and as such he should accept that fact that the owner disapproves and take the
work down (which he did) 3) Martin violated Zed's copyright. I explicitly said
that what he did was copyright infringement, which can certainly be attributed
to a mistake, because you wrongly stated it was plagiarism, which is
considered morally unacceptable and reprehensible, and is in no way the same
thing.

You want to know what IS irrelevant? The fact that Martin and Zed (and both
you and me actually) both acknowledged that the approach is not useful,
specially since I already stated in the grandparent post - to which you
responded - that I agreed on not only Zed's rights as copyright holder, but
also on the fact that the approach is rubbish. It doesn't matter whatsoever if
the approach works or not, it only matters that Martin did it in good faith
because he believed it could be of use when he started, even if later he
discovered to be wrong on this count.

I addressed your fart noises on my second point of the parent post, on the
last paragraph I was referring to actual farting because it is more
representative of what happened here. I referred to them separately and
referred to 'farting' and 'farting noises' to make this clear (as they are
obviously two different things). The fact that you equate a jerk making
farting noises in a restaurant with making a mistake in regards to a free
book's licensing is beyond my comprehension, as it implies that you're
disagreeing with the intent of the person in question when it was already not
only stated by him, but by Zed himself in his messages.

 _Also, it's "make fart noises", not "fart". As in deliberately make a noise
considered rude._

You said it yourself, the key word on this example is 'deliberately'. Martin
did not make deliberately farting noises (deliberately and knowingly doing
copyright infringement on Zed's work), he actually farted by mistake
(mistakenly having violated Zed's copyright thinking it was fair use), and
because of this he should apologize to the restaurant, but such events in no
way grant Zed the right to humiliate, demean, or degrade Martin. I'm not
justifying Martin's actions, as I agree that he's wrong and Zed is right, I'm
criticizing Zed's responses and the manner in which he expressed himself
towards not only towards Martin, but towards the Ruby community itself.

The funny thing is that I actually respect Zed for his contributions, and
isn't someone I'll be deleting from my newsreader because of something as non-
important as this. That doesn't change his attitude was reprehensible, and
that he could have handled it better.

~~~
Semiapies
This is the last I'm saying to you on this topic:

Sometimes you wrong someone. Sometimes you do something classless. Maybe it's
very deliberate, and maybe it's due to your sloppy carelessness, as Edme has
copped to in this case.

In that situation, _it's all on you_. It's not on the other person. Everything
you do to justify it or minimize it or recast the other person as the bad guy
_is wrong_. This goes as well for your friends or random people sympathizing
with you.

You may have to suck up some unkind words for what you've done - tough. You've
earned them and the anger behind them, and you have to just deal with it.

------
steveklabnik
The "good riddance" posts really sadden me. I've generally found the Ruby
community to be a great place, and then comments like these come along...

------
ohyes
This is clearly not plagiarism. At no point did the translator take credit for
the original work. There is a definition for plagiarism; it involves taking
credit for someone else's original work.

Zed would probably have done better by simply quoting the license and asking
him to take it down (because of copywrite infringement) instead of incorrectly
accusing him of plagiarism (which implies he was doing the translation in bad
faith).

~~~
ohyes
Factual correctness warrants down vote? Seriously?

"the wrongful appropriation, close imitation, or purloining and publication,
of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions, and the
representation of them as one's own original work."
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism>).

This was not plagiarism.

------
natep
Nobody's going to notice this comment now, but Martin Edme has posted a formal
apology.

Zed, it seems, will not apologize, based on recent twitter updates:

Hilarious hypocrisy how I'm called a "dick", "asshole", "d-bag", and "cock"
because I said someone should have some "class".

33 minutes ago via web [1]

[1] <http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/774156132024320>

------
BCGC
Wow. There are people who will steal* and then have the guts to argue they are
right.

I did not read LPTHW before this.

Now I read it and it's indeed hard work.

Wow.

------
andjones
Although I understand the author's desire to not have his work copied, I think
he stepped across the line when he used a personal attack:

"Guys like you are the reason I stopped doing Ruby."

------
frou_dh
It must suck to have your everyday online activities tracked, and your
character traits debated at length by strangers.

Look at the title of this HN post, pure celebrity drama-bait.

------
ddemchuk
Why do people take the time to digitally bicker with veteran trolls? We're all
professionals, this isn't something you want your name attached to on the
"nothing is ever forgotten" internet.

------
sblom
Wow. I really want to be on Zed's side here, but while his message is 99%
legit, his delivery leaves something to be desired.

~~~
xentronium
Original author (martinemde) had good intentions but was stopped by a fact he
was dealing with a douchebag.

Lesson #1: don't deal with douchebags.

Zed thinks he's making something of extraordinary quality that's going to suck
when crowdsourced. I am 100% sure he's wrong because wikipedia is crowdsourced
and wikipedia is awesome.

~~~
natep
Did you notice that the book has an issue tracker? How many other books have
one of those?

Also, Wikipedia may be awesome, but what percentage of Wikipedia clones are
awesome?

------
lhnz
If the guy credited him and Zed's book was free online, then I really think
Zed is doing the coding world a disservice here...

~~~
lhnz
I'm getting downvoted, so I'll expand:

If you make ethical judgments directly from the license then Zed Shaw is
right. But Martin hadn't really done much wrong. The book was free online, and
it would be classed as fair use by many people if it had been made using
music, film or tv. He also made sure to credit Zed for the text, and only an
idiot would think that Zed was able to change his text to fit the code better
so I don't think it would reflect back on Zed badly at all...

Then again, in my opinion, what is important is that there are more beginning
code examples to read in Ruby. Bullshit over rights or hatred of whole
programming communities be damned.

------
xentronium
I'm probably gonna get downvoted, but now I'm quite sure that web really IS
public domain. We just have to state it explicitly. From now on gonna use
public domain license on any public work I produce. Who's with me?

~~~
nickpinkston
Well, there's copyright's all over the web, and anything without it is common
law'ed into being copyrighted - so no.

Personally, I go by the mantra of "if you post it, anyone can use it how they
like".

Sure, Zed is within his legal rights to ask for this, but I'm surprised no one
is viewing this from the angle of the Ruby community losing a (possibly)
valuable resource because "Zed's brand" has to be maintained... Seems like
everyone is so sensitive about the sanctity of their ideas.

~~~
Semiapies
As linked elsewhere: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1739890>

Copy & paste probably won't make a useful Ruby book.

 _"Seems like everyone is so sensitive about the sanctity of their ideas."_

That's the pain of dealing with other human beings as if they _are_ human
beings and not just web sites or github repositories.

~~~
nickpinkston
My argument isn't that this Ruby version is so compelling it deserves to
exist. I think restricting creativity "because I made it" is a stupid reason.
Maybe others would have (are?) making useful "X The Hard Way" books stop
because of this. I don't see what the benefit of him restricting it is.

------
grandalf
Disclaimer: I'm commenting on this thread only to help Zed generate more
publicity/buzz for his book, which was surely the reason why he was a dick to
Martin about it :)

People understand clearly when someone like "The Situation" acts like a dick
to gain notoriety, but many programmers seem not to be able to understand when
a programmer does it. This is very effective schtick, and Zed has inspired a
few others of late.

Bottom line: Zed is a nice guy and Martin is a nice guy.

------
jpcx01
Someone, please tell me where there is a copyright notice anywhere on
<http://learnpythonthehardway.org/> or on the PDF
[http://learnpythonthehardway.org/static/LearnPythonTheHardWa...](http://learnpythonthehardway.org/static/LearnPythonTheHardWay.pdf)

If he's so fanatical about copyright, why can't he post something about it?

The culture developers are used to on github is forking people's work and
tweaking it (while still giving attribution to the author). It's not totally
shocking that someone would accidentally apply this philosophy to this book.
Telling someone he has "no class" for doing this is just being a dick.

But then again, its Zed D Shaw. He earned that middle name.

~~~
johnny22
copyright is implicit in many places isn't it?

~~~
dctoedt
In the U.S., and AFAIK in much of the rest of the world, copyright arises
automatically, without the need for either registration or a copyright notice,
once the "original work of authorship" is "fixed" in a "tangible medium of
expression" (which can include saving to disk). See generally
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Obtaining_copyright>

~~~
nroach
While the copyright itself can arise without registration, the ability to file
suit in federal court for infringement of the copyright arises only once
registered. Registration can take place after the date of infringement. For
more see <http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register>

