Project Gutenberg: Common Misconceptions

Project Gutenberg:  Common Misconceptions
The Most Common Misconceptions About Project Gutenberg

Last update:  February 27, 2007


These are the mistakes most commonly found in the press
coverage concerning Project Gutenberg:


1.

There are only 20,000 Project Gutenberg eBooks.

Actually, as of this end of the week in which I
am writing this should be closer to 25,000 than
to 20,000, including the subtracting out of 350
duplicate entries via PG of Europe.

This is just the number on the original site:

http://www.gutenberg.org


Don't forget the ~80,000 at

http://www.gutenberg.cc

Actually there are about 100,000 grand total.
Nearly 80,000 are at http://www.gutenberg.cc,
not to mention European and Australian sites.



2.  There is only one official Project Gutenberg site.

Here is a list of the official sites and numbers of books:

http://www.gutenberg.org   About 22,500 items.

http:  PG of Australia  About 1,500 items.

http:  PG of Europe  About 500 items.

http://www.gutenberg.cc  About 80,000 items.

http://www.readingroo.ms About 400 items, another 400 soon.

Keep an eye out for Project Gutenbergs of Canada, Portugal,
the Philippines, etc.


3.

All Project Gutenberg files are public domain.

About 2% of our files are copyrighted, used with permission.


4.

You can't choose what fonts, colors, margins, etc., to use
with the plain text Project Gutenberg eBooks.

Plain text eBooks appear in YOUR choice of default fonts.
There are any number of fonts, colors, etc., to read in.

However, a great many highly paid pundits seem to know no
way to select these and complain about their own defaults.


5.

Project Gutenberg is the same as The World eBook Fair

The world eBook Fair is a consortium of eBook providers
who get together once a year to demonstrate the numbers
and power of eBooks, both free and commercial.

The First World eBook Fair was in July, 2006 and had an
estimated 1/3 million eBooks available, and gave away a
million eBooks, or close to it, on most weekdays.

There was an attempt at a Second World eBook Fair later
in 2006, but various elements kept the project from the
same success, so it has been rescheduled for July, 2007
with 2/3 to 3/4 million eBooks.


6.

Michael Hart is officially with University of Illinois
departments, programs, etc.

While he is a highly honored graduate, there has been,
and remains, no official connection, though maybe that
will change in the near future.


7.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are subject to data loss that
the media sometimes refers to as "bit rot," in which a
medium is used that either degrades over time, or that
requires a certain kind of computer to read, and would
be totally useless without that kind of computer.

This kind of argument has often been used by those who
would like to prevent eBooks from becoming "the medium
of choice," but the arguments all hinge on a big false
assumption, that data must be stored only in one place
and trickle down to the world from there.

In this case I often like to quote Linus Torvalds, the
author of another open source project, Linux, who says

"Only wimps use backup; real men just upload important
files on FTP and let the rest of the world mirror it."

Note, FTP servers were the predecessors of the servers
using HTTP that run The World Wide Web.

The general idea/ideal was that these "anonymous" file
servers allowed anyone to download all the files via a
similar method as today, but without "cookies" and the
other things that require leaving your name behind.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are still available via these
anonymous FTP servers [File Transfer Protocol], around
the world, and on many other kinds of sites.

There are so many sites carrying Gutenberg books, that
anything short of a worldwide catastrophic failure for
the entire Internet would still leave plenty of copies
for free download at any time.

Not one single Project Gutenberg eBook has ever been a
victim of "bit rot" as perpetrated by various media to
convince people that anything stored in a computer has
to be considered as temporary because the drives fail,
the CDs and DVDs rot over the years, etc., but not one
of these take into account the original philosophy for
the distribution of Project Gutenberg eBooks:

"Unlimited Distribution."

Long before the media ever started complaining about a
brand new phenomenon of losing millions of dollars, or
perhaps even billions, in computers run by governments
or academics, the ideal of Unlimited Distribution took
all the winds out of such arguments, other, of course,
than for those who simply refused to allow copies made
in enough places to insure the safety of the data.

Yes, some Project Gutenberg eBooks have disappeared on
the original servers, I have witnessed it myself:  but
a simple note I sent out got me copies back because it
is a fairly standard worldwide policy that persons are
backing up, or mirroring, our books from the moment of
their first appearance.

Thus, even some eBooks that disappeared from all three
servers I put them on between midnight and dawn, still
were preserved elsewhere, and were easily replaced.