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O’Reilly (not autoparts) really has an amazing site, and is an excellent resource, but is the value really there?

You may have seen their books while perusing the Barnes and Noble bookstore, they usually have a picture of some strange and exotic animal on the front cover. In fact you may have purchased a few, or have seen their site. Pretty amazing stuff. Lots,,no I take that back, TONS to read. When I first began my Masters program three years ago, this is one of the first sites I had visited. Interestingly enough, I knew nothing of computers and probably by all intent should not have been let into the program. I knew I was behind the curve on this program (and at times felt I had bitten off way more than I could chew) but nevertheless I hacked on. My very first coursework was based on the Linux system. I didn’t even know what Linux was let alone try to use it, I know now that Linux was invented by Linus Torvalds who came up with Linux while working with the Minix and introduced his finds to a bulletin board at the ripe old age of 21. Yes, yes, while I was out partying and trying to figure out how many goldfish I could swallow, Linus was doing amazing computer stuff. Incidentally, I am roughly 9 days older than Mr. Torvalds. Weird world huh? But I digress.

Knowing I was behind the curve in the computer world, I did as I always did when faced with a steep learning challenge. Googled like mad! I read tons of stuff on Linux, I watch hours of training videos, and stumbled on the O’reilly site. I immediately got a subscription to the Safari Bookshelf, for $19.95 a month, which was an incredible buy. I had a 10-slot bookshelf and I could ‘check-out’ any book I like for as long as I like. I even got 5 download tokens per month, where I could download any 5 chapters of any book and print them off for my reading pleasure. But I have been questioning the O’Reilly network lately. They were, and still are huge supporters of the open-source movement. Now they have alot of proprietary stuff too, but their supporting books for open source were awesome. They have an entire library of Java books, all support and refer back to one another, and books written for the ‘beginner’ all the way to the ‘pro’ computer user. I am not a big fan of O’Reilly’s beginner series. They tend to start off with a ‘hello-world’ thing in chapter one, then bombard you with overwhelming meta-data in chapter 2, then jump into the deep end by chapter 3 where they ask you to program your own operating system before you can actually start learning how to code, or whatever. But their reference books are hands down the best in the industry, in my own opinion.

Now, no doubt their reference books are certainly worth the effort to buy but the rest of their stuff, I just tend to wonder. I was a full-on O’Reilly person. I subscribed to every blog, bought loads of books, had a subscription to the bookshelf read tons and tons of their stuff. Including Mr. O’Reilly’s treatise to Web 2.0. I watched hours of podcasting, and downloaded many chapters of stuff. I even bought the little booklets they came out with. After graduating, I finally said, “enough is enough”. I Tell you what broke the camels back, it would appear that the bastions of open-source are a bit more money-hungry than the benefactors of open-source like I originally thought. Now I know that every business has to make money, that is just the nature of this world. I want to be paid for my services just like the next person. I have purchased alot of stuff in the computer world. If I think something is worth it, I will buy it. I bought my own copy of Adobe CS2, Macromedia, Windows XP, etc, etc. If I like it, and it is a fair price then I generally buy it, even if it is proprietary. As I have stated in other postings, what bothers me is the ridiculous price skyrocketing juggernauts that some of these companies have become, or are becoming. I am seeing this similar trend starting to befall my friends over at O’Reilly.

Take for instance an awesome magazine they have recently introduced.

I’m one of those kind of people who like to be able to DO stuff. I’m kinda pragmatic that way and this magazine definitely appeals to my pragmatic-do-it-for-no-money-down personality. Hey! If I have the choice between paying $300 for an X-Box and building one myself, I’m going to build it. As long as the TCO doesn’t exceed $300. However, with a Make magazine subscription you are going to pay $34.95 for only 4 issues. Now I think that is a bit much for this kind of subscription. You can get alot of this information for free over at Instructables. Which brings up another issue, many things can be accessed on the web for alot less. I would think that O’Reilly would keep this in consideration when pricing their stuff.

Synopsis:
So, in conclusion is a subscription to Make really worth it? Probably not, considering I can get alot of projects over at Instructables. Is a subscription to the Safari bookstore worth it? Probably not, considering from a reference point of view, that you can pretty much find all your Web Development solutions simply by Google-ing them. It is my opinion that O’Reilly may be overstepping some pricing issues.