Professor Creates His Own Cisco Manual

yootje writes "ZDnet is running a story about a professor who made his own Cisco networking textbook, with 800 pages: "Computing instructor Matt Basham's suggestions for improving Cisco Systems' official training manuals fell on deaf ears for years. But he appears to have the networking giant's attention now." The professor made his book available for free on his website."

Re:This should happen more often

[MoonFog]

Sue him for what exactly? He wrote the book and unless he's plagiarised some of its content, then they wouldn't have much of a case. Given his profession, I'm sure he's more than capable of writing this book on his own.
He's the owner of the material, and I seriously doubt that he can be sued for anything at all.

Re:Still Wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

If just one state would sit down and even purchase some good works and make them freely available for modification and distribution, then the cost of education would be greatly reduced.

Don't know about the cost saving thing, but wouldn't having a "freely modifiable" text book defeat the purpose of having standardized text books? If the bible thumpers in the midwest were free to remove objectionable references to Darwin and the PC nuts in the west were free to remove text that didn't match their PC creed, then it would seem like we'd have quite the mess. I understand that this sorta happens now since institutions and individual professors are allowed to choose their own texts, but it seems like the situation would get worse and not better if this were allowed?

Re:Still Wondering

[bje2]

i'm not sure that would work...you need to have some "standard" teaching material somewhere...if you let every individual professor/teacher alter their text book according to their spercifications, things could get out of control...think about the viewpoint an affrican high school teacher in mississippi might have while teaching about the civil war...or a staunch anti-war believer when teaching about vietnam...children's views of events would eventually become skewed...that's why it's good to have standardized text books...

of course, this relates mostly to elementary school & high school...obviously once you get into college, many teachers don't even use text books to begin with...

Re:This should happen more often

[slusich]

In this day and age, with the current laws on our books, the fact that he hasn't really done anything to get sued for doesn't mean they won't sue him.

Re:This should happen more often

[gmack]

"About half the people in this program barely know how to turn on a computer, so we need to start with the very basics. The Cisco curriculum and texts assume a certain level of knowledge."

I'm not so sure this is the best idea hes dumbed down the manual to make room for the computer illiterate.. shoehorning students with no technical background into a network administration course seems like a bit of a waste.

There is a lot to be said for having a sepperate class to teach the basics.

This is about certifications

[192939495969798999]

They probably figured, "we can charge a ton for our cert's forever, because no one is going to take the time to write a book." OOPS! I hope other people follow suit and finally we will be rid of the "if you're not certified, you can't have learned it" business principle.

Re:This should happen more often

[Short Circuit]

In this day and age...

In this day and age, laws are irrelevant. You just have to be able to financially afford more time in court.

Scratch the "in this day and age" part, though...it's always been true.

Re:This should happen more often

[Jayfar]

Huh?! What API? Unless your considering router configs as application programs, there is no API. And there are literally hundreds of books written about cisco configuration, beyond those published by/for cisco.

Re:Still Wondering

[jefe7777]

once Harcourt, Editis, John Wiley and McGraw-Hill pack it up because you've killed off their ability to make a profit, i hope you have a talented army of volunteers ready to crank out some material.

DMCA Anyone?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Considering that the manual discloses methods of operating and controlling Cisco products, as well as the interfaces used by them, could Cisco sue under the DMCA for copyright theft of its instructions on how to use its equipment.

If the instructions were generated by a computer algorithim then the answer to this is a resounding yes as then Cisco would have patented 'a method by which Cisco,(us), uses a PC to and printer to generate the instructions to operate our hardware', and could then sue the good doctor as presumably he used a PC and printer too.

Re:Near monopolies considered harmful

[Anonymous Coward]

I've often suspected that some companies make the technical knowledge to use their products inaccessible to build up a loyal and fanatical following of technical professionals who know the real tricks.

A certain popular DB company comes to mind. If anyone could set one up, more people would see that simpler solutions (mySQL, SQLite, etc.) would fit the bill 90% of the time, but as it is DBA functions are typically controlled in a company by a cabal that is heavily invested in their hard-won knowledge of a certain tool and they can be counted on to deprecate alternate solutions.

Similarly, for a lot of networking functions, certainly not all, but a lot, a Linux or BSD box with standard software would fit the bill, but the networking group in most organizations has a one-solution mindset.

Re:Still Wondering

[joedobsonjr]

"...you need to have some "standard" teaching material..."

Standard teaching material doesn't lead to a correction of skewed viewpoints. It just makes sure we only have ONE skewed viewpoint.
---------------

Re:Still Wondering

[isorox]

The fact profs write their own textbooks and get you to buy them?

Re:Still Wondering

[Suidae]

Figure it out and then explain it to each other.

I and my classmates did the same thing. We found that it took about the same amount of time (or longer depending on how much beer was involved) but we learned the material better, since we had to know it well enough to explain it clearly.

Re:This should happen more often

[mwood]

TFA reports cisco as saying that they don't make any money off the training materials. Those are a cost of doing business, where in this case "doing business" is growing the market by turning out CCNAs and CCNPs. It's good to see a company remembering what its actual products are.

And their product manuals are available for free on their site. Another wise investment, and a very inexpensive one.

About the only areas where he'd have to be careful is others' copyrighted material (as mentioned above) and use of others' trademarks. Prof.s learn early how to avoid those problems or they don't remain prof.s very long.

Now, if cisco didn't like this, they *could* apply pressure through the institution's relationship with them as a training site. But it sounds like they are going to avoid PR disaster and work with the author instead of against him. Good for them. I and my shares approve of listening to customers' concerns about our documentation.

Re:This should happen more often

[k98sven]

How did this seriously strange view of IP law get modded up?

You don't need permission from anybody to publish an API. There is no special copyright law covering API specifications.

Perhaps you are thinking of trade-secret status?
Well, if something has been publicly published, it doesn't doesn't get trade-secret status. And that goes even if they put some silly 'license' on their documentation.
(See for instance the BSDi case, where the Unix sources were found not to have trade-secret status without even being public, but simply because they had been seen by so many people. And that is despite the fact that they even had written agreements with all of them.)

You don't have to get a license to publish an original book on anything, ever.

Do you know what a license is? A license is permission from a rights-holder to exercise an otherwise exclusive right.

For copyright, that means performing, reproducing and creating derivatives of copyrighted material.

For patents, that means the right to manufacture and use the invention.

For trade-secrets, that means the right to divulge and use commercially the trade secret.

Now, if I chose not to publish my API secret, then it may be a trade-secret, in which case you may not have the right to publish it if you happen to be 'in' on it. APIs can however be reverse-engineered. You can reverse-engineer an API without any trade-secret knowledge (i.e. 'clean-room') and publish that, that is perfectly legal.

Perhaps you think that the API itself can be copyrighted, and that a description of the API is a derivative work? Well, that's a theory, but very dubious legally.

Under copyright law, code is separated into the "expressional" and "functional" parts, and APIs reasonably always fall into the latter part, and are therefore not copyrightable. In case law, good room is generally given for compatibility code, being functional. (Again, you can see the BSDi case, where it was found that header files describing the same Unix API were not infringing)

If the API itself is not copyrighted, something which has yet to be seen, the description of the API cannot be a derivative work.
Naturally, the description itself can be copyrighted, including the official description, (e.g. the API specification) but anyone can write their own description.

Screenshots of websites?

[Diabolical]

Downloaded the thing and read a few pages... he starts almost imediately with a nono regarding websites. Screenshots of websites where to find information complete with arrows to parts of that image... nice.. What if Cisco revamps their website?

459 pages is the page count of this book... at least.. that's what MS Word 2k is telling me.

Re:Cisco books...

[illumin8]

Cisco Press books are, without a duobt, the best technical manuals (from a manufacturer) that I have yet read.

I agree wholeheartedly. Especially Basam Hallabi's Internet Routing Architectures. (No affiliate link) This book taught me how to establish BGP routing policies, and is considered fundamental reading by almost anyone on NANOG.

Re:This should happen more often

[k98sven]

Popular misconception on Slashdot.
I don't like the DMCA, but you should read exactly what [harvard.edu] it prohibits.

The DMCA prohibits "circumvention of copyright protection systems". No matter how you look at it, that's a very different thing from a general ban on reverse-engineering.

The most draconian interpretation possible is to assume that it prohibits reverse-engineering of copyright protection measures. But that's it. And it explicitly allows circumvention for interoperability purposes.

Without getting farther into the issue, an API cannot reasonably be interpreted as a copyright protection measure. And reverse-engineering isn't necessarily circumvention.

So it's really not an issue at all in this case.

You get what you pay for?

[Percy_Blakeney]

After reading the first couple of chapters, I must admit that I am not impressed. My first impression is that he has a lot of experience with Cisco equipment, but doesn't have an in-depth understand of networking principles. For example, while introducing the OSI model, he says:

Layer 5: The Session Layer... This is the layer that says "HEY!" I want to establish a networking session. In fact, if you have internet access from your home computer then you may even see the message "establishing session" during the connection process.

That's just wrong. The OSI model is different from what actually happens in the TCP/IP protocol stack. The Presentation and Session layers aren't actually present in the real TCP/IP world, so claiming that something happens there is incorrect. That "establishing session" message is taking place either at the Application or Transport levels, but not at the non-existant Session layer.

In addition, his informal prose ("old school", "friggin", etc...) gave the book a definite unprofessional feel; some people may think the book is more accessible this way, but I felt that it was a bit sloppy.