[moksha256]

It can make sense. It's also better for longevity of the work.

I'm surprised Jeff is offering his videos for free too though...that seems like a perfect candidate for a paywall to capture some of the value created from the books he's giving away. Of course I don't know the whole story and realize it's a personal choice -- but, in any case, this is exactly why giving a book away for free can be so powerful.

I'm planning to launch a book marketplace that offers books for free if downloaded via P2P while charging a small fee for direct HTTP downloads.

https://100millionbooks.org/librery/

[geerlingguy]

> I'm surprised Jeff is offering his videos for free too though

I figured it would also offer people a distraction / way to learn something during the workday (or night, I guess, outside of US and most of Europe). I've considered doing a full-fledged course a few times (and have had offers to do it for a couple different platforms), but live streaming it kind of forces the issue, and has helped me get a little more structure on my YouTube channel, which has kind of been festering since 2006 :D

Now I'm considering moving on to a similar 'Kubernetes 101' at some point, maybe. It's _relatively_ fun for me, and if it opens up possibilities of another group like Device42 sponsoring portions of it, that would be a net benefit IMO—most of the free content I see is absolute-ground-level and doesn't really get far enough to make someone productive.

I know for myself, having really good intro-course-level content free would've helped my growth earlier in my career (before I was able to get my workplace to pay for decent training material and conference travel).

[geerlingguy]

One other aside, I'm often reminded of:

There's a saying "Those who can't do, teach."

I think, on the contrary, a good teacher has to not only be an expert on a topic, but has to poke and prod it further, then distill everything about it down to the essentials to turn it into teachable lessons.

Anyways, I figure that I have a certain amount of knowledge in my head. It would be nice if I could spread that knowledge as far and wide as possible, since that could ignite a bit more passion for good software and solid automation in others.

[jlgaddis]

I always heard it as, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

OTOH, I worked at a .edu for several years (networking) and was asked to teach a course when the contracted instructor suddenly had to back out at the last minute. That led to me teaching a course or two per semester for a few years and, to be honest, I'm fairly certain that I learned way more when I was teaching than my students did. As you said, you have to be much more than just an expert on the topic.

[m52go]

All great thoughts -- you sound like a generous guy :)

> Those who can't do, teach

I'm with you. I'd change that phrase to "Those who have done, should teach".

Reminds me of an idea I think I read in one of Nassim Taleb's books...that growth of education tends to follow the growth of industry, since industry is where a great portion of tinkering and experimentation is happening.