[mhxion]

> Other free ebooks don’t put much effort into professional-quality typography: they use "straight" quotes instead of “curly” quotes, they ignore details like em- and en-dashes, and they look more like early-90’s web pages instead of actual books.

True. I hope you guys get proper funding and keep this project on.

Contribute: https://standardebooks.org/contribute/

(I was thinking a Slack or Discord would be better than Google groups mailing list for this?)

[toomuchtodo]

Mailing lists are superior for async communications IMHO for endeavors such as this. Nothing needs to be addressed immediately (and as everyone is a volunteer, realistic expectations should be set for response latency; email helps that, Slack/Discord does not), and the mailing list archive is a natural log of conversations and decisions that are open and accessible (Free Slack only keeps 10k lines of conversation history if I recall). A mailing list is also free (can be, not always, but can be), and does not require a chat client installed.

[paulcarroty]

Mailing lists was superior in 90's-00's, now when discourse/slack/discord/etc exists there's no reason to use ML except nostalgia. Parsing tons of new emails isn't easy.

Also I'm prefer to avoid Google services 'cause privacy issues.

[kkarakk]

Counterpoint: Old mailing list conversations are difficult to parse and encourage a "ignore it until the issue goes away" mentality if no one is enforcing a reply rate.

Mailing lists only really work for corporations imo

[andrepd]

Why would you force people to use nonfree proprietary software in order to contribute to an open project?

[StavrosK]

That's a good point. I find Zulip better than Slack/Discord for discourse (even better than mailing lists, with some caveats, and it's Apache-licensed:

https://zulipchat.com/

[hollander]

Free as in "Google"?

[chronogram]

Help! Help! I’m being forced to use non free proprietary software!

Can just have both.

[sdrothrock]

I was hoping I could contribute financially, which could help fund any software or hosting costs they have, but it doesn't look like they're accepting donations (which is also fine, and completely their prerogative).

But! If someone from SE is reading this and it turns out that you just don't have a way to donate because it doesn't seem like people will donate, definitely put a paypal button or something out there. :)

[robin_reala]

We have minimal hosting costs (ebooks are small) and no software costs, so the rest is just down to time. Luckily, the majority of the process is proof reading, which it turns out people quite enjoy doing regardless, and is easily parallelisable our across multiple contributors.

So so far not need for contributions, and it makes things simpler to not need them.

[rand84545]

> they use "straight" quotes instead of “curly” quote

why care?

[rand84545]

I don't mean this ironically, I really don't understand why would anyone care about such things?