I recall we discussed the problem before about the ease of distributing
pdfs. I don't think it differs greatly from the free sharing of
photocopies of chapters from SAS manuals I saw as a student and teacher
"Say, can I make a copy of the logistic chapter?" I now have a CD with
the complete SAS manuals which is not expensive, takes up virtually no
room on the shelf, and is wonderful to use since I can search it.
Richard Herrell
NIMH
NIH
On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Nick Cox wrote:
> William Dupont
>
> > I think I would still prefer a hyperlinked pdf version of the paper
> > documentation, but a hyperlinked SMCL version would be a
> > big advance.
> > Would creating hyperlinked pdf documentation be much more
> > difficult or
> > expensive than doing this in SMCL?
>
> The difficulty or the expense of doing this are not
> the issue at all, or so I suspect. It's what would be
> done with the resulting product.
>
> Let me put one key facet a little more bluntly than
> Stata Corp might.
>
> If your colleagues and students could print out .pdf willy-nilly,
> how much would it affect their willingness to buy the manuals?
>
> How many people, world-wide, would buy cheap pirated
> versions of (subsets of) the documentation if they existed?
>
> Individually, of course, no one wants to pay any more than
> one can avoid, modulo ethical scruples.
> Collectively, however, the viability of
> Stata Corp must depend on its financial success, itself
> dependent on at least some people paying substantially
> for what they get.
>
> Nick
> [email protected]
>
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