[cowboyhero]

Love the idea, the context, and the execution. It's a great project. Not a fan of the name.

Zed Shaw has a well-established series of "Learn $topic the Hard Way" online books, with Addison Wesley publishing a 3rd edition of his "Learn Python the Hard Way" this spring. He is building a brand and a business around this name.

I'd be surprised to learn that "Learn ... the Hard Way" isn't trademarked, but even if it isn't, it strikes me as disingenuous, misleading, and potentially confusing to name your work after his.

As far as I can tell, Mr Shaw has nothing to do with this project, but then the "Learn Linux the Hard Way" name might, to some, imply that he does.

Edited to add: I do not have a dog in this fight, just pointing out a potential conflict.

[zedshaw]

Actually, my understanding is you can't really trademark titles of things. That's why you'll see books and movies with the same titles and nobody getting sued.

There's also a Perl book that predates my book which I didn't know about, so there's precedent for people to do this already.

Finally, I really don't care so much about the title, I care more about people getting the method right. It looks like this was taken down so I can't comment on how it's written, but my typical beef with these books is they use the title, then they proceed to write a completely different book that doesn't follow the method at all. To me that's just obnoxious arrogance on their part and typical programmer "I can do it better" crap. There's a reason my books are structured the way they are, and just taking the title to pimp a book that isn't even close to the same structure just pisses me off.

But, I haven't seen this book yet so I don't know what it's done.

EDIT: Ok found the google cache, and it looks like this one's doing it right. I officially bless this title in the name of ... like whatever and shit.

[aidenn0]

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure you can trademark titles. An example is the "X for Dummies[1]" series that has at least threatened to sue people[2].

People currently associate "Learn X the Hard Way" where X is computer related to your lcthw project. If you let other people use it, that distinctiveness will go away and it will likely not be something you could trademark

[1] http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4009:ae... [2]https://www.chillingeffects.org/protest/notice.cgi?NoticeID=...

[cowboyhero]

Very cool. Thanks for the clarification.

Also: I'm not an expert, or a lawyer, but it's my understanding that you can't copyright titles, but you can trademark them, or portions of them.

The guys (IDW?) that publish the "For Dummies" book series regularly enforce the trademarks around their name and cover design.

Hollywood often gets around the copyright problem by trademarking some film titles (this is why it's always "Disney's The Lion King" and not just "The Lion King.")

[daemon13]

Would be great that you do the Linux book whatever the title may be! )

[mwargh]

Thanks for you appreciation :)

As to naming, Zed Shaw is OK with this: http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1288945508.html

[rfrey]

Agreed, it's a great project and I applaud you for undertaking it and pushing it so far. Takes a tremendous amount of work and self-motivation to do something like this.

I read the linked post top to bottom twice and I don't see Zed anywhere giving blanket permission to use his title. He is responding to people who ask him if they can port LPtHW to another language, by saying "here's how to write your own so you don't have to port mine".

You should change the name unless you have contacted Zed directly for permission, IMO.

[jQueryIsAwesome]

In this skeleton book he offers he does seem to imply that anyone can use similar names: https://gitorious.org/learn-x-the-hard-way/learn-x-the-hard-...

[SilasX]

Great, but Addison Wesley, publisher of the paper versions of some in the series, may not be, and at this point, they might be able to make the call.

[_feda_]

It's a potential point of conflict, but it's a pretty generic naming convention in my view and I'd be dissapointed to see that Zed has slapped a trademark on it. Even if he is building a brand around the name I don't see why he wouldn't be open to letting some other technical authors in under the same umbrella.

[endersshadow]

You don't understand how trademarks work. Zed automatically has a trademark on it. The question is whether or not he goes through the trouble of enforcing it. If he doesn't, he gives up the mark. Federally registering a trademark is really only to show the due process of protecting your mark.

Copyright is in the same boat.

Also, this is not nearly a generic enough name for it to be ineligible for trademark. It appears that Zed isn't interested in protecting this mark, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't have a case.

[zem]

I have a puppy in the fight - I started a ruby tutorial titled "Teach Yourself Ruby the Hard Way", but didn't make it past chapter 1, so when Zed released his book I figured it was only right to let him have the name, and rename mine if I ever get around to completing it (2013 resolution!).

So from that perspective, I can't help but agreee that even if Zed is fine with this project, it's a bad idea. It's an unnecessary muddying of a "brand" that has had a lot of work put into it.