New Debian Book

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

Hello everyone,

I've mentioned this in IRC a few times, and several Debian developers
have examined the book already, but in light of the recent discussions 
in the other list, I figured it would be good to make an announcement
here.

Ossama Othman and I have been working on, and just finished, a book
entitled Debian GNU/Linux: Guide to Installation and Usage.  There are 
several very unique things about it:

 * It's published by Macmillan Computer Press / New Riders, so it
   will have wide distribution.

 * The FSF will get a portion of the sale from each copy sold.

 * The copyright of the material is assigned to SPI (unusual in this
   business)

 * The book itself is licensed under the GPL! (Even more unusual!)

The book (which includes binary-i386 CD 1) will be selling for about
$25 and is aimed at those new to Debian.  The ISBN number is
0-7357-0914-9 and it's already shown up on several online booksellers.

I do have HTML generated already but am not yet prepared to post a URL 
here because it is not yet on a high-bandwidth link.  I expect it to
show up on mcp.com within a few weeks.

My questions to you are:

 * Should we put a copy of the sources (LaTeX and EPS) up on
   debian.org somewhere?  If so, would somebody please contact Ossama
   or myself with details on where?

 * Would anyone like to see it packaged?  This would certainly
   not benefit its target audience, but would perhaps be good for
   completeness?

 * Is it appropriate to link to MCP's site, given that they will be
   giving a portion of the revenues to the FSF?  (FWIW, Stallman has
   indicated that he plans to link from fsf.org to it, due to the
   favorable license and royalty plans)

Needless to say, Ossama and I are quite glad to have been able to work 
on this project.  I'd like to thank Ben Collins and Havoc Pennington
for working on the project as well.

Regards,
John Goerzen