I recently received a free trial Kindle Unlimited offer from amazon. I decided to pick up a few typescript books that are “free” to Kindle Unlimited members but cost money otherwise to buy. One of these books TypeScript: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Learn TypeScript Step by Step — 2020 (2st Edition) ($7 for digital $17 for paper back) popped up really high in my search and had a great cover. I decided to borrow it under the subscription despite being familiar with “don’t just a book by its cover”.
At first I really enjoyed the book. The content was demonstrative and easy to understand. Even having used typescript for a couple of years I still find some material to be engaging. After a couple sessions of reading, however, I discovered that I had read the material somewhere else. After a bit searching I realized that most of the book’s content were lifted directly from the Typescript Handbook with little rewording and identical code examples. Outside of the fact the book is a bit stale while the handbook is constantly being updated.
Technically this practice isn’t illegal since the Typescript Handbook is published under Apache License 2.0 which allows commercial use; however, this is clearly unethical when an individual is profiting directly from a work exists in the open source domain. I hope Amazon as well as the readers will take action to prevent and correct such abuses.
