Re: Out Of Print Oberon

From: <>
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 11:10:50 +0100

Ronald Praver wrote:
>
> I was talking with some people and I want to run this by everyone.
> I was told that all out of print books copyrights revert to the author?
> If that is true here is what I propose:
> I will have any books on Oberon that fall into that catagory scanned,
> like
> Project Oberon,
> The Oberon System USER GUIDE AND PROGRAMMERS MANUAL,
> Programming In Oberon Steps beyond Pascal and Modula.
>
[...]

Hi Ronald,

as I remember, I sent you already a personal mail, but I'd like
to put that up in c.l.o.

I contacted the responsible editor at ACM (Jono Hardjowirogo
<jono{([at]})nowhere.xy
and here is his reply:

> Unfortunately, all the Oberon series of books were put out of print
> because they no longer sells. So, it was done for economic reason more
> than anything else. Interests in the Oberon project are no longer as
> strong as they were once, so, we felt that it was time to retire the
> books from the active list.
>
> I do agree with you assessment that the project was of a monumental
> importance to computer science. For this reason, I am looking to have
> those books scanned and made available in their entireties on the ACM
> website. This way, future programmers who are looking for materials on
> Oberon can simply take a look or download the materials in which they
> are interested. I am not sure when we can have this affected as it does
> involve some logistical issues from our side.
>

I replied:

>
> Do I understand you correctly that ACM's digital library will be
> enhanced by books (currently I find only journals, citations and
> proceedings). Will these be available only to ACM members or
> also to everyone interested ?
>
[...]
>
> I forgot to mention that I have already scanned (& OCR'ed) chapter
> 14 of Reiser's Oberon System and got the permission to use it for
> documentation purposes. Getting the permission was an awful experience
> of getting handed from ACM (Deborah Cotton) via several stages to
> Pearson during several months.
>
> Maybe others in the (small) Oberon community would be volunteer ...
>

and here is his reply:
>
> Most likely they will be available to everyone, not just ACM members.
>
[...]
>
> Sorry for your experience. Often after such an experience one would be
> more sympathetic to those who pirate works out of frustration. I have
> on occasion spent months tracking rights of a work that's not even as
> important as Oberon.
>
> Thank you for your offer for the use of the Oberon community. When the
> time comes, I may want to contact you for this purpose.
>

chapter 14 is hidden in: http://www.lrz.de/~bernhard/OV4-StdCoded.txt

Sorry, this is a BlackBox StdCoded file and the format of the file
OV4/Docu/Texts.odc is a BlackBox document, but currently I have only
the permission (by AWL, resp. Pearson) to redistribute it as
documentation for the (early beta) of the OV4Texts glue module.

regards
-- 
    Bernhard Treutwein             Tel. +49-89-5996-642, Fax -615
    Institut f. Med. Psychologie  Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet
    bernhard{([at]})nowhere.xy    --------------------------------  ---------------------------
    C is its own virus
Received on Tue Nov 23 1999 - 11:10:50 UTC

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