[FM Discuss] TOC report part one...

[Andy Oram]

This is a wonderful summary, Adam, and I hope you can post more. I'd like to make a few requests and some comments of my own.

* Could you blog about this somewhere? Not all the details about copyright or even your coffee-drinking habits, but material that would help non-FLOSSies learn about the conference.

* O'Reilly conference keynotes are much better than most tech industry keynotes. Instead of VPs droning on about how they meet their customers' needs, we try to stimulate new thinking. And as you saw with Stein (it's also true of Cory Doctorow), this means bringing in keynoters with ideas diametrically opposed to many speakers and attendees.

* The print book industry is in gradual decline, and the computer book market in somewhat faster decline. I've managed to find some new areas; one always has to take a risk. E-books will inevitably take over, leaving print books as luxury artifacts like analog watches, so publishers still have some chance to make money the traditional way without opening up the whole process. But revenues will be less than in the past.

* O'Reilly is in a position similar to a technologist who is one of the first to try a new language or framework. It's painful and costly, but we come out with things to teach. All those other publishers who attended want to learn what we've done. So as you've said, we can make money reporting our experiments even if the experiments have questionable revenue.

* Regarding trade secrets, they do have value in the US. Now for a shameless plug for our book Intellectual Property and Open Source, which I think anyone who enjoyed Adam's post could benefit from. Its chapter on trade secrets uses the Flaming Moe from The Simpsons as a case study, and shows that trade secrets can be used to sue people for misappropriation (through improper means or a breach of a confidential relationship).

* The earlier writer, to my knowledge, who deeply investigated the idea of open up books as conversations was Joseph Esposito in his 2003 essay "The processed book":

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1038/959

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Andy Oram  O'Reilly Media                     email: andyo at oreilly.com
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