In Defense of Project Gutenberg:  The Early 2007 Edition


Project Gutenberg has been under attack since before the
founding of The World Wide Web, both from those who will
state they support electronic text and electronic books,
to those who will state they support Project Gutenberg--
and of course from those who will flatly state a support
of paper books that should continue, as much as possible
as they think they have for hundreds of years.

These attacks come in many forms, from proposals that an
eBook library should only appear in certain formats, and
that eBooks appearing in any other format should have to
be removed from circulation. . .a sort of new electronic
book burning. . .to flat statements that an eBook has NO
value whatsoever if it is not identified with some exact
paper edition, complete with errors. . .to the fact that
no one would ever actually READ a book from a screen, to
a number of other examples, some included below.

The most vociferous and vitriolic attacks come from some
who feel that only their own personal book tastes should
rule the entire worldwide field of electronic books.

If you don't feel that eBooks are a worldwide field just
do some searches for the various terms ebook, ebooks and
e-book, e-books versus the terms bomb and bombs; even at
the height of the various Middle East bombings, searches
of this nature showed a surprising fact that eBooks were
mentioned more than bombs. . .a remarkable feat for some
field that many in the library and publishing field were
trying to denigrate as not being of any consequence.



Project Gutenberg Is Not Due To Anyone's Personal Taste


I am often asked by our volunteers what books I want for
the future of Project Gutenberg, and I politely decline,
stating from the very outset that I did not want eBooks,
particularly Project Gutenberg eBooks, to reflect any of
my own personal taste, and that each volunteers would be
welcome to choose their own favorites.

In the same senses, I have been unwilling to state which
fonts, font sizes, margin length, page length, etc., may
be my own personal favorite. . .I leave that up to those
whom will be reading the books.

However, great numbers of pundits are willing to state a
number of preferences, and to state for me that I have a
preference for something else, when the truth is that my
own preferences have never been stated.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are plain, so plain, in fact, I
am accused of requiring that they be plain, but that has
not been the case, it was just how the earliest of these
eBooks were prepared, and how plain eBooks easily can be
moved from platform to platform, not always perfectly in
terms of changing preferences of hard and soft returns--
but still reasonably readable in nearly any combinations
of hardware and software out there.

This cannot be said for any of the other formats various
people have proposed for eBooks.

However, Project Gutenberg welcomes eBooks in all format
choices, whether they be new or old, though we would try
to also make them available in other formats so we could
bring as many books to as many people as possible.



To Bring As Many Books To As Many People As Possible


The ideal of Project Gutenberg is to raise literacy rate
numbers around the world, as stated in our motto:

"To Break Down The Bars Of Ignorance And Illiteracy."

Project Gutenberg does not exist to increase literacy in
only terms of certain groups, but of the whole world.

To bring eBooks to the entire world means we have to see
that the processes are simple.

This is not to say that the more academic elite will not
be able to create some complex system of eBook format to
preserve certain aspects of certain editions only elites
of the academic world would actually recognize, but that
for the person who has never read Shakespeare, that many
of the arguments about the various editions simply don't
apply in the face of getting a readable edition to them.

The truth is that other than the First Folio, which will
hardly suit anyone, but the most ivory tower of readers,
nearly any of the popular Shakespeare editions will read
very much the same to the first time reader and that the
subtle nuances argued about by scholars turn out to be--
or not to be--even 1% of the actual content.

Another truth is that I simply refuse to get involved in
such petite bourgeois argumentation as to which is best:

To be or not to be.
To be, or not to be.
To be; or not to be.
To be: or not to be.
To be-or not to be.
To be--or not to be.
To be - or not to be.
To be -- or not to be.

or any similar arguments that have minimal bearing to an
effort of a first time reader of Shakespeare.

Project Gutenberg, while it already has the half a dozen
most popular editions of Shakespeare, wasn't designed to
suit the needs or desires of the academic elite who have
multiple editions of Shakespeare already at hand, but to
bring the world of books to those who do NOT have such.

The same holds true for all those who think their format
or their font or their other personal tastes should rule
the world of eBooks.

When these people complain that Project Gutenberg is not
offering support of their format choices, what they were
really complaining about is that Project Gutenberg would
not support their format to the exclusion of others.



Project Gutenberg:  Inclusive or Exclusive?


To be inclusive or to be exclusive, that is the question
we should all be asking of Project Gutenberg.

From back in the day when we only had a dozen eBooks, we
received "nastygrams" that we had not chosen the edition
that was the favorite of a certain person or group.

This continued even when included multiple editions, for
it was not only the point of these complainers that some
particular editions be included, but that all others out
there should be excluded.

This continued to questions of markup, formats, etc., to
the point where The Library of Congress, in its infinite
wisdom, refused to even mention plain text as a format--
in its 1992 "Workshop On Electronic Texts" that possibly
would never have taken place without Project Gutenberg.

Yes, any number of eText/eBook formats were mentioned to
an agonizing point, but not plain text.

This is because each of these formats had some political
group promoting it, with Adobe's .pdf format leading the
way, but never quite making it to their goal of being an
only officially adopted format for government documents.

Wow!  Think of the billions of dollars poor Adobe lost!

Project Gutenberg simply continued being inclusive and a
large number of formats have been tried, more welcome.

Around the same time the Text Encoding Initiative [TEI],
was even more actively trying to eliminate plain text.

I won't go into details, as I promised not to when I was
granted an interview, but the Text Encoding Initiative's
goals were neither to encode texts nor for initiative.

There are any number of similar efforts promoting theirs
in a similar manner. . .creating standards, then hoping,
and more or less only hoping, that the world should beat
a path to their doorway, making them rich and famous.

Project Gutenberg invites each and every one of these to
run their format up the flagpole to see who will salute,
but even the most energetic of these promoters seems for
some reason or another to never convert even 1% of those
Project Gutenberg eBooks into their chosen format.

Meanwhile, several other independent efforts who had NOT
tried to get Project Gutenberg to announce their formats
as "The Official Project Gutenberg Format" had converted
virtually all the 20,000+ internally produced eBooks for
their own reformatting, and put them on the open market.

"Put them on the open market."

Hmmm.

That's the major difference here between the complainers
and those who actually get out there and do things.

The complainers want to be crowned king before they will
even create the land they would rule.

The doers are willing to do all the work required to get
what they want, and then to promote it.

It turns out that each of those promoting their formats,
and there are plenty, says that it is trivial to convert
eBooks to and from these formats. . .well. . .that's the
way it starts. . . .

However, after challenging these people to do this quite
trivial thing, it turns out that it is not so trivial.

After all the dust has quite settled, they finally admit 
that they need lots of help getting eBooks INTO the very
format they said is so trivial, and then, AFTER all this
work has been accomplished. . .by others. . .only then a
trivial process could be used to get the eBooks back OUT
and into any number of other formats.

When questioned further, it seems that it should take as
much effort to convert already existing eBooks into some
format in question as it took to create the eBook in the
first place. . .doubling the effort required.

Far from trivial.

Personally, I would rather have twice as many books in a
variety of formats than half as many books all in a cute
format I hadn't really tried out yet.

However, I should add that there are plenty out there in
the eBook world who feel just the opposite, that the new
world of eBooks should be half as numerous, but twice as
pretty to look at.

Here, again, we devolve into a matter of personal taste.

Here, again, I refuse to argue about personal taste, and
refuse to impose anyone's personal taste, no matter what
kind of ivory tower elite kennel club pedigree, on those
people to whom I have dedicated Project Gutenberg.

Project Gutenberg is for everyone.

Project Gutenberg is for everyone to create eBooks.

Project Gutenberg is for everyone to read eBooks.

Project Gutenberg is for everyone to distribute eBooks.

Making those eBooks more cumbersome, in format, in size,
in programming needs, in sacrosanct [sic] errors of what
is terms a "canonical nature," and all that stuff is not
what Project Gutenberg is all about.

Though such books are welcome, along with all others.



Such Books Are Welcome, Along With All Others


There's the rub for so many of the academic elite.

If all others are welcome, where did eliteness go?

The truth is that eliteness went out with Gutenberg.

Which Gutenberg?

Both Gutenbergs!

Johannes Gutenberg's printing press changed the world of
books from a history of where the average book price was
as much as the average family farm to a world where book
prices were so low that wagonloads of books showed up in
the countryside on market day, and even the poor village
got to see and buy these books.

Within just 50 years of Gutenberg's invention more books
had been made than in all previous world history.

Project Gutenberg's eBooks changed the world of books to
a place where a computer costing less than $1,000 now is
capable of holding a million eBooks, along with all that
other stuff people keep putting in their computers.

A million books for a thousand dollars?

That's a thousand books per dollar. . . .

Not even Herr Gutenberg dreamed of such a thing. . . .

I am dreaming of a day in 2021 when I hope there will be
a billion free books to download. . .10 million books in
each of 100 different languages.

A billion books for a thousand dollars?

That's a million books per dollar. . . .

???????!!!!!!!