If you wanted to learn a new programming language, maybe Microsoft’s popular C#, Amazon sells several highly regarded books on the subject through its website. But if you had a beginner's knowledge and wanted to master the language to achieve more complex programs, Jon Skeet's C# in Depth might pique your interest with its more than 400 pages of instruction and explanation on some of C#'s more specific features. You may even want to delay the purchase, because the new second edition arrives on bookshelves within a matter of months, at a price of 50 U.S. dollars for both softcover and ebook versions.

With five other texts on the market, some on C# and others on Groovy and "functional programming," Skeet is an author whose knowledge on such topics can provide him with a small but steady income from interested programmers looking to expand their skills. Thankfully for those who have little money to spend on books every time the urge to learn strikes, online communities like the programmer-centric forum Stack Overflow provide avenues for knowledge-seekers at no cost for participation. In fact, Stack Overflow allows anyone with a free registered account to access a huge database of questions and answers that cover a widely diverse range of programming topics, and to ask questions to a member pool of around 160,000 other users.

If you were curious to know the statistics of its most active user: a member of one and a half years (Stack Overflow began in August 2008), he has answered almost eight thousand questions and gained a grand total of 167,000 reputation points -- the most of anyone -- in a ranking system that shows how successful a user's answers are. His reputation as a programming genius has spawned numerous posts discussing his expertise and almost mystical, robotic persona, and he continues to this day to provide users, both novice and advanced, with answers covering several areas of interest. The identity of this prolific user is Jon Skeet, whose free and widely available advice can be found as well in the pages of C# in Depth.

To Sell, or To Share

Between the sale of knowledge printed in physical texts and the sharing of that same information through an active community of programmers, a contradiction is noticeable in Skeet's case: why would anyone willingly buy what is offered for free? There are several obvious reasons why some may still choose to purchase books like C# in Depth, such as the clear narrative and instructional format often found in books that is unlike the free-form and often intractable discussion common throughout Stack Overflow. Reading a well-versed, even pedagogic explanation of a particular topic, however, can often be replaced by having a search form and an ongoing public discussion between expert and novice; in both cases, the answer is given in detail and information is exchanged, rendering neither format to be particularly more informative than the other.

Yet there are striking differences between the two versions, highlighting the notable benefits in user generated and maintained wisdom that is swiftly shepherding the production of knowledge to occur in communities rather than fixed objects like books. Perhaps the most compelling reason is the immediate availability of asking Skeet a particular question and receiving an answer within minutes, as well as the opportunity to clarify the question or append comments, all of which unique separates this new avenue of knowledge-access from other modes of learning. Also, if Skeet, who lives in Reading, England, is unavailable because of time differences, any number of almost or equally knowledgeable users could share their answers and comments just as easily and fruitfully; such a system never relies on one authorial voice.

"Flash CS4 refuses to let go," asked by the user Ender in February 2010 and identified as one of the most popular questions asked on Stack Overflow, received more than 500 votes on 6 definitive answers concerning Adobe's Flash and a problem with class relationships and namespaces. Though the terms used to describe the question may confuse anyone not involved in Flash programming, or programming in general, its importance and relevance are clear from the many eyes that perused it -- approximately 40,000 pairs of them -- and the accuracy of the top answer chosen by the large number of votes from passers-by. Though only one answer was elevated to the top position, several other users gave their input, and more than a few commented on the answers, to collectively ensure that not only was this particular issue solved from multiple perspectives, but that it will stay conclusively answered for future users who have the same or similar problem.

Freedom of Information

In an article summary for "Giving Knowledge for Free," the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development mentions the growing trend of educational resources being shared online among institutions at no cost to students or schools, raising "basic philosophical issues to do with the nature of ownership... [and] issues of property" of instructional material. Skeet, whose instructional advice is shared for free, contributes to this trend by providing his expertise in C# openly to the programming public instead of assigning it a monetary value or locking it behind ownership and intellectual property laws. Favoring the general knowledge of the public, Skeet mentions in his developer blog that his desire to help others by answering questions is a greater reward than "praise and fandom," and perhaps even profit derived from purchases of his published works.

In his decision to sell this information while also volunteering it online, Skeet is simultaneously traveling down two paths, both of which lead farther away from the other and inevitably, exclusively define the place of knowledge in society vis-a-vis the concept of property. Should curious programmers pay a fee for access to his explanations on advanced C# principles, or should they join a community where asking questions and seeking answers is a given right rather than one that requires purchase? By exploring both sides of the coin in a way that pits both against each other in the marketplace, and due to the undeniable influence of freedom in the marketplace, Skeet may be consigning the fate of his work to the public wealth, not his own.

Regardless of this trend's direction, Skeet does in fact own all eight thousand answers featured on Stack Overflow. Whereas traditional copyright gives authors solely the right "to copy, distribute and adapt the work" they produce, Stack Overflow and many other community-minded sites utilize terms set forth by licensing agreements created by the organization Creative Commons; these licenses are more diplomatic because they are less antagonistic to a reader's desire to copy and remix an author's work but ultimately do not erode the preservation of the author's identity. Under the particular agreement chosen by Stack Overflow, the Attribution-Share Alike license, anyone can replicate or adapt code provided within an answer as long as it is attributed to the original author and is as well under the same licensing agreement, thereby ensuring that that content will never fall under a more restrictive copyright.

Economic (and Legal) Rivals

The origins of this new licensing system arose from a legal effort by colleagues Lawrence Lessig, lawyer and activist, and Eric Eldred, an Internet publisher of works in the public domain, to stem extensions to copyright law that lengthen the lifespan of intellectual property protections instead of allowing the rights to expire. The target was the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, the product of a campaign by Disney specifically to protect its beloved cartoon character Mickey Mouse, "who was nearing the end of a seventy-five-year term of copyright and was due to enter the public domain." Though the Supreme Court ruled against the Eldred and Lessig team in Eldred v. Ashcroft, in the process the two established several Creative Commons licenses "to imagine and build a legal and technical infrastructure of freedom" that could maintain public accessibility and sharing under legal terms the courts could acknowledge.

The purpose of Creative Commons is to give artists, authors, musicians, etc., who want to release their works to the public domain, a legal framework to do so, "making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright." The choice to use a Creative Commons license or contribute content that would be attached to such an agreement is often a socially motivated statement to promote freedom of knowledge and creativity among consumers, yet Skeet seems to be in limbo over expectations of how his own material would be legally incorporated into society. Whereas the protections around C# in Depth restrict readers from copying or even giving parts of the text to interested parties, the Stack Overflow license allows users to engage in those activities without restriction, with the intention of building, in the words of the Stack Overflow team, "good answers to every imaginable programming question" for public benefit.

This conflict is strongly economic as well: with very few reasons to buy his book over an active and ever expanding repository of programming tips and tricks, Skeet's activity at Stack Overflow challenge the profitability and even existence of his traditionally published work. As a related example of this dynamic, Encyclopedia Britannica recently started allowing users to submit edits that, after validation from an editor, would be inserted into the original entry, perhaps inspired by the popularity and benefits derived from Wikipedia's active and willing users. Britannica's users, however, are still required to pay for access and cannot copyright their edits under less restrictive copyright because of the encyclopedia's own terms, a situation that some believe may not be enough to give Britannica a leg up on its competitor's offerings, which are free, available for copy and distribution, and much more numerous.

A Textbook Affair

The economic and legal repercussions of sharing information for free and with less restrictive copyright are significant in the courtroom and marketplace, but how do these knowledge-based communities impact the practice of learning, in both formal academic settings and for those learners at home looking to pick up an additional skill? Most college students, or even those in high-school, know the exorbitant prices tagged onto textbooks and encyclopedias, making the ordeal of starting a new academic semester not only emotional, but anxiety-ridden. With such high prices set on knowledge, many students have done without the physical book itself and looked toward online piracy or, for those who tend to avoid illegal activity, the burgeoning open-source textbook movement.

Gary Matkin, Dean of Continuing Education at the University of California, Irvine, explained in early 2009 that "cost concerns and pedagogical efficiency" are forcefully altering the textbook landscape, and therefore students' access to knowledge. Information once wrapped up in thick, glossy paper and hardcover binding is now being offered through several initiatives seeking to create free and open-source educational communities that can challenge the rising costs of textbooks and the unending releases of new text editions, by providing their own versions licensed under Creative Commons. For example MIT's OpenCouseWare, described as "a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content," provides one of the most comprehensive collections of material offered by a university online and is licensed under Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike, which is similar to Stack Overflow's license but only allows non-commercial uses.

Fifty dollars for the second edition of C# in Depth is by no means cheap, but compared to the often gasp-inducing prices of textbooks at college bookstores, Skeet's published work is not nearly the most expensive book on Amazon. Yet with so many in education focusing attention away from publishing traditional textbooks and toward producing easily updated resources at no cost to potential students, should Skeet continue to spend his efforts releasing future editions to the book, or instead focus on providing his knowledge of C# through Stack Overflow and other open-source avenues? With "the market for books on programming topics [so] miniscule", as one of the founders of Stack Overflow believes, and the usefulness of trial-and-error, programming blogs and question-and-answer sites, has the decision already been made for him?

Inevitably Public

The decision to publish both books and free Creative Commons-licensed material is, of course, an individual one, but the situation is a sign of the swiftly changing times that are challenging the traditionally guarded and restrictive industry around knowledge production. Whereas Encyclopedia Britannica is trying to identify ways of incorporating users into the editing and creation process of its entries, or whereas programming books are failing to provide the many lessons that can be gleaned from coding blogs around the Internet, communities within Stack Overflow and Wikipedia are defining how individuals get their information, learn from others and perhaps even contribute their own expertise. Forget steep price tags and restrictions on distributing information from a book: the commons demand the freedom of knowledge.

Skeet's phenomenal participation in an open-source movement centered around a community of 160,000 users has already gained him hard-won, if perhaps temporary, cache among his coding brethren. So many individuals with questions concerning Microsoft's C# have found their answers not after paying fifty dollars or searching through the unresponsive pages in a book, but within minutes after submitting them to an eagerly awaiting group of knowledgeable users. But despite his ability to help so many without having to go through a single publication house, Skeet disregards the potential of his participation in Stack Overflow by calling it "charity work"; identifying his work as such, he not only subordinates his answers to purchasable books, but refuses to choose a side in the growing fray between open access to knowledge and its more restrictive version.

Will "charity work" of this kind soon become the paradigm for sharing knowledge in our society, and not just subsidiary to copyright-laden works? Perhaps: with each successful open source project or community, what was once perhaps an absurd notion -- that information is best served by an open and free community -- may likely become the norm, like an Overton window gradually shifting our perceptions of what is acceptable knowledge-production and sharing. If the open source and open knowledge communities continue to produce excellent, unbiased content for the learning masses, perhaps one day Skeet's version of charity will be to give work to the fledgling publishing industry.