Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1999 01:12:53 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: jkh@zippy.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, jkh@zippy.cdrom.com, BMCGROARTY@high-voltage.com, jooji@webnology.com, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Authors notes for FreeBSD books Message-ID: <199908090112.SAA07775@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <11441.934158353@localhost> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Aug 8, 99 05:25:53 pm
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> > I would be more than happy to write a FreeBSD book (or two) *IFF* it > > would settle down from its moving target status long enough for there > > to be sufficient sales. For an internals book, this would mean: > > I doubt that's going to happen no matter what edicts are handed out, > nor would enforcing stagnation in the name of documentation likely be > a very good idea. > > I also tend to get far more requests for "beginner's books" from all > the publishers I mentioned than for any "internals" books, as nice as > that might be to have. In fact, I've yet to have a single publisher > express interest in anything with much technical depth - they want > "FreeBSD for ISPs" or "doing eCommerce with FreeBSD" or something > suitably buzzwordy. As one publisher put it, "we want a Complete > FreeBSD of our own to sell", and TCF isn't exactly an internals book > by any stretch. A "FreeBSD for ISPs" book, I think, would have to have technical depth. It's currently my job at Whistle (an IBM company 8-)) to work on building up some NOC infrastructure, with the potential for technology transfer to clue-starved ISPs (NOC-in-a-box), and I have to say that the technical details are very important. A "FreeBSD for ISPs" book would fall into the category of "heavy API use in user space", from the posting to which you are replying. It requires a commitment to not change out from under the software in user space to make this work (API's are not _that_ fluid, but they are fluid enough to damage the utility/applicability/value of such a book). One of the titles I've been toying with writing for about 6 months now is "how to be a good ISP" (not necessarily FreeBSD specific enough for you, I know). While working on the issues of implementing a _good_ NOC, I've been faced a number of times with the shortcomings of "almost there" software. This is not to single out FreeBSD; the lack of DDNS support in the RADIUS servers out there (ala Microsoft's IAS, which has integrated dynamic updates of DNS records to support ETRN against dynamic IP addresses), and the ability to support more than 300 virtual domains hosted on a single mail server (ala Microsoft Exchange -- I have to send some sendmail multiple-queue support patches off to Eric), supporting split horizon DNS (it's so complex that I have submitted a BCP draft RFC on it to DNSEXT), etc., etc., is all quite challenging. The process definitely magnifies various foibles in the software that is available to run on FreeBSD (or Linux, for that matter), not just those of FreeBSD itself, for trying to build up such systems in the first place. Frankly, the free software community has failed to address productization issues that become obvious when you try to actually build such systems. I'm not (yet) qualified to write such a book based purely on practice and not "practice plus theory", but I will be, soon. I think your best bet for "FreeBSD for <insert market segment here>" type books would be to contact <member of market segment using FreeBSD> to get the things written. This is actually probably a good job for the people reading this on the -advocacy list: approach people in the FreeBSD gallery, and see if they will write "how to" books, or if they will let you document their setup in a "how to" book of your own. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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