There are many reasons we don't want people to publish the flp.mobi script (or others like it) on a public server, besides those mentioned in the 'issue' I posted on Github. There are issues of quality control: the online edition of FLP isn't finished yet -- it's still rough around the edges in some ways, and we're still working on it. For that matter we are still correcting errata in FLP, and we don't want inaccurate, incompatible copies of FLP to proliferate for pedagogical reasons. Moreover, we downloaded and ran the flp.mobi script and the epub it makes is, in our opinion, ugly. We wouldn't want this barely legible copy of FLP circulating any more than the horrid PDF scans of ancient editions that abound in torrents. In my "issue" on Github I mentioned that we are currently working on ePub/Kindle versions. The reason it is taking us so long to complete them is because our standards are high: it's taking a lot of cleverness to figure out how to do it right. (It's only too bad the programmers who are contributing to flp.mobi did not come to us and ask our permission, because if they had, I would have worked with them. That is, in fact, exactly what has happened: A responsible adult, who happens to be a much more talented programmer than the authors of flp.mobi, wrote to me and asked permission if he could make an ePub from our HTML. I told him about the various attempts to make FLP ePubs, why they had failed thus far, and invited him to do better. And he has!! So now he is working with us. If we publish his work he'll, of course, be paid for it. That's what you get for asking :-). However, the issue that concerns me most is the possibility that Perseus or Caltech might take the free-to-read online edition of FLP offline if the legal expense of defending its copyright becomes excessive. Perseus, who licenses exclusive reproduction and distribution rights on FLP, allow us to serve the free online edition only conditionally, if it doesn't hurt their sales revenues or cost them anything otherwise.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Michael.
you pretty much hit the nail on the head
See my comment, #18, below.
Who the HECK are Gottlieb and Pfeiffer, anyway?
See Kip Thorne's Preface to The Feynman Lectures on Physics New Millennium Edition
http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_90.html
and John Preskill's 9/21/13 Quantum Frontiers blog posting, "Free Feynman"
http://quantumfrontiers.com/2013/09/21/free-feynman/ .
There are many reasons we don't want people to publish the flp.mobi script (or others like it) on a public server, besides those mentioned in the 'issue' I posted on Github. There are issues of quality control: the online edition of FLP isn't finished yet -- it's still rough around the edges in some ways, and we're still working on it. For that matter we are still correcting errata in FLP, and we don't want inaccurate, incompatible copies of FLP to proliferate for pedagogical reasons. Moreover, we downloaded and ran the flp.mobi script and the epub it makes is, in our opinion, ugly. We wouldn't want this barely legible copy of FLP circulating any more than the horrid PDF scans of ancient editions that abound in torrents. In my "issue" on Github I mentioned that we are currently working on ePub/Kindle versions. The reason it is taking us so long to complete them is because our standards are high: it's taking a lot of cleverness to figure out how to do it right. (It's only too bad the programmers who are contributing to flp.mobi did not come to us and ask our permission, because if they had, I would have worked with them. That is, in fact, exactly what has happened: A responsible adult, who happens to be a much more talented programmer than the authors of flp.mobi, wrote to me and asked permission if he could make an ePub from our HTML. I told him about the various attempts to make FLP ePubs, why they had failed thus far, and invited him to do better. And he has!! So now he is working with us. If we publish his work he'll, of course, be paid for it. That's what you get for asking :-). However, the issue that concerns me most is the possibility that Perseus or Caltech might take the free-to-read online edition of FLP offline if the legal expense of defending its copyright becomes excessive. Perseus, who licenses exclusive reproduction and distribution rights on FLP, allow us to serve the free online edition only conditionally, if it doesn't hurt their sales revenues or cost them anything otherwise.