Did you know that MS Word on Linux using Wine works better than Word on Windows? Neither did we until we heard it from Bill Pollock, publisher of No Starch Press. He also answers the question: Who makes a better writer, a proprietary software user or a Linux user?
The Video FOSS Force Interview
Meet Bill Pollock, founder, CEO and chief editor of No Starch Press, who loves to put out books about Linux and Open Source for reasons he explains in the interview. But No Starch also publishes books about Legos, security, and a lot of other, seemingly unrelated topics that fall at least broadly under the “geek interest” label. Interested in hacking cars, teaching electronics to kids or showing an older friend or relative how to use Facebook? No Starch has you covered. Want to write a book? Pollock doesn’t publish a lot of titles, but you never know. He’s open to almost anything interesting about Linux and Open Source — and interested, if less so (for reasons he explains in the interview) in titles about proprietary software. FYI, Pollock is a Linux user himself, and does most of his editing with LibreOffice, so he has unimpeachable personal Open Source credentials.
After you watch today’s interview, you may want to check out a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” Pollock and some of his authors did in December, 2015. It will give you even more insight into how tech book publishers think, from one of the craft’s finest practitioners.
Robin “Roblimo” Miller is a freelance writer and former editor-in-chief at Open Source Technology Group, the company that owned SourceForge, freshmeat, Linux.com, NewsForge, ThinkGeek and Slashdot, and until recently served as a video editor at Slashdot. Now he’s mostly retired, but still works part-time as an editorial consultant for Grid Dynamics, and (obviously) writes for FOSS Force.
