[Buddha-l] Useful for Enlightenment?

[Franz Metcalf]

Gang,

Many thanks for the appreciation of the Journal of Global Buddhism.  
There's a saying common on the net that information wants to be free.  
This for two reasons. 1) It is so very easy to put up information in  
easily and freely copiable form. 2) Information, especially scholarly  
information, exists precisely to be expanded and applied; these  
actions can be achieved in direct proportion to the extent of that  
information's freedom. The JGB: freeing information since 2000. <http://www.globalbuddhism.org 
 >

By contrast, I just had the discouraging experience of wanting to  
recommend a chapter I wrote some years ago to a teacher of an  
introduction to Buddhism course. But that chapter is not free. It is  
bound into the paper chains of a book that no one wants to buy. I  
*have* the pdf on my computer, but do not believe I can legally share  
it (certainly not with a class of students, anyway). They are left to  
the wilds of the internet and my information rots in its pulpy prison.

So let us cheer the demise of the $150 book, but not replace it with  
the $40 pdf!

Franz