This is part of an email I received from O'Reilly's Tools of Change for Publishing mail list. As usual I think Tim O'Reilly has got it right. His company does a much better job publishing than MS Press. I hope this turns into a case were part of MS gets absorbed instead of MS absorbing someone else.
Full details are in Tim's post on the Radar blog (and in the Press Release and in the statement from Microsoft ), but thought one part of this deal worth calling out specifically here: I'm particularly excited that as part of this agreement, Microsoft has committed to make its ebooks DRM-free and device-independent. One of our goals at O'Reilly has been to make sure that ebook customers can read them on any device, and have the ability to keep using them even if they change their preferred device. Having Microsoft Press join us in this commitment is a big step forward towards an open ebook market.
