I think it's not accurate to say you can keep them "forever" if you can't download a local copy
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yeah, anything you can't keep in your own physically owned medium is in the good graces of anyone who holds it for you. even if packt doesn't revoke these books someday, they could still shut down or something.
Fair point, I changed it. :)
Ok but I assume these are books that almost nobody buys... I mean, now it was a book about Gephi, whatever that is.
And the other books were from 2018...it's probably not great to read those now, since tech moves so fast (with some exceptions).
I don't disagree. The topics are a bit hit or miss and yes, my newest free ebook from them is from 2020, so all contents should be taken with a grain of salt. I did manage to grab some on C++, Machine Learning and different Pentesting tools, so not everything is completely obscure but as you said, usually they do not choose their most recent books. I see it more as a nice free resource on some topics in the books as of course not everything will be entirely out of date. It's also not necessarily worse than buying their 2023 books today and using them for the next 3 years... That's just a general problem with tech books, at least these outdated books are free.