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Ask HN: Does anyone have a great public domain list of programming books?

124 points by breck ↗ HN
Anyone build an awesome collection of programming books? Are you willing to make it public domain, if you haven't already?

I'd love to import your data into PLDB.com. Will give you many internet points and/or something else that will enrich your life.

comment here or email me at liability@pldb.com

29 comments

[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] thread
bawolff
Not too many programming books written pre 1927.
Mordisquitos
I understand that the poster is asking for a [public domain list] of programming books, not a list of [public domain programming books].
bawolff
I mean, there are even less internet lists written before 1927.
necovek
One can explicitely assign their work into public domain (in some jurisdictions). And taxpayer funded stuff in USA is usually mandated to be public domain too (with plenty of caveats, ofc).
Archelaos
I heard of one from Leonardo da Vinci. Couldn't find the link, though.
User23
Lists are generally speaking not copyrightable, which is to say in the public domain.
fredgrott
I think people are missing the poster's point.

he or she might be asking for the ultimate list in open source programming books.

Other than searching for the universities that have set up programs to develop open source programming books and obtain their own maintained lists; I know no other way to complete the task.

For example, there is a group of Canadian Universities that has an overall program to develop open source textbooks that happens to include computer science.

breck
Thanks all! This one looks great: https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books

Trying to recruit them to #TeamPublicDomain

sethish
Oh we're team public domain. But this repo is only an index and we don't control the upstream licensing. Check out gitenberg or unglue.it and reach out to @gluejar if you want to talk about free ebook metadata.
JKolios
Do you mean literally public domain or books with permissive licenses in general?
[dead] f8er
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