O’Reilly Learning platform no longer as a benefit of your ACM membership

69 points by pavanto 4 years ago | 47 comments

Received an email from ACM

As of July 1, 2022, you will no longer have to access the O’Reilly Learning platform as a benefit of your ACM membership. Despite our best efforts, O’Reilly Media is unwilling to continue to license their content to ACM for members. Please finish your reading/training by 11:59 PM ET on June 30, 2022. If you wish to continue accessing O’Reilly Learning past this date, you will have to contact O’Reilly and purchase a license directly.

We regret that O’Reilly is not willing to continue providing this service to ACM Members and hope that you will continue to enjoy other benefits of ACM membership, such as our Skillsoft collection (with thousands of online books and courses from publishers such as Manning Publications and No Starch Press), as well as ACM TechTalks, the ACM ByteCast series, and more. All of these can be found in the ACM Learning Center.

ACM will continue to explore new partnerships to deliver additional professional development benefits and other opportunities for lifelong learning.

Sincerely, ACM Member Services

Is there any cheaper way to access O'Reilly Learning Platform?

AnonHP 4 years ago |

Totally on a tangent here (and I realize that this may rub some people the wrong way):

Maybe just ditch O’Reilly learning altogether? The publisher stopped selling ebooks online several years ago and left people with the only option of subscribing to the online service (it does participate in the discounted Humble Bundle sales once in a while). Now these subscription prices are way higher than before. Maybe this is working out quite well for O’Reilly or maybe O’Reilly is grasping at straws (to make more money), but if an individual balks at the prices, isn’t every access a vote for the pricing and the platform, and an indirect encouragement to do away with partnerships that don’t pay “full price”?

What I’d be interested to know is what alternatives exist, even if they aren’t as broad as this one.

JJMcJ 4 years ago | |

I remember when that happened with the ebooks. One day you could buy ebooks in multiple formats, including PDF, or ebook + paper book for about 25% more, usually. Then we woke up one morning and the only digital format was Kindle and you could no longer buy direct from O'Reilly in any format.

I still think their books are among the best edited and informative on the market but their business practices are getting less and less appetizing.

modelviewpotato 4 years ago | |

Your can buy O’Reilly DRM-free PDF and ePUB ebooks from eBooks [dot] com. I love the amount and variety of content of O”Reilly platform but the web application is pretty mediocre and the mobile apps are buggy as hell.

the_only_law 4 years ago | |

I gotta wonder what their mindset was doing that? We’re they particularly struggling prior to switching to subscription-only? Had other publishers begun to do something similar? Data collection scheme?

tedmiston 4 years ago | | |

I see O'Reilly Learning as a mirror image of what Spotify did for music and Netflix did for TV shows.

Some people assume it's just books, but they have live content, video courses, etc too.

It's the best purchase I make for my professional life every year. If they ever offered a lifetime tier, I'd likely buy it.

In the past few years, I've browsed thousands of technical books on the site; but when it comes to paper technical books in the same time period, I've probably bought maybe just ~25. Access is king.

blub 4 years ago | |

Some O’Reilly books are available on ebooks.com DRM-free.

asdefghyk 4 years ago | | |

Its why they shut down. TO much piracy. All the Oreilly ebooks I purchased had no DRM and I purchased a lot. Was a VIP customer - but maybe it was widely handed out - I do not know.

softveda 4 years ago | |

I am a happy customer of O'Reilly Learning. I do not even earn US level salary, but for a few hundred dollars annually I get access to a massive collection of books, training videos, live training, interactive coding and much more. In my country (Australia) self education is tax deductible as well. I consider this a small investment for my career.

asdefghyk 4 years ago | |

RE ".....The publisher stopped selling ebooks online several years ago...." The ebooks had not DRM as do lotd of other ebooks . However most where widely pirated. So they where probably heading for bankruptcy ids my guess if they kept selling ebooks.

lstamour 4 years ago |

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about the value of O’Reilly Learning. On the one hand, basically all the books from major publishers. But on the other: lots of interesting, self-published books are excluded; price goes up but they’ve never added back the ability to view books in their original print layout (a feature taken away sometime in 2011-2013, I forget exactly when) so some books are particularly hard to read; and the iOS and Android native reading apps are also pretty terrible compared to reading experiences from Apple Books, Google Play Books, Kobo, Overdrive or Scribd.

They (O’Reilly) have all this excellent book content but they don’t use it to help me understand which books I should read — what if they could pull out code samples or pull quotes, or help me read books like Manning’s, which can add audible narration to their books? What if there were more links to GitHub, or a categorization system that could group books by API version and recency/relevancy?

What if O’Reilly could meta-search and actually return ACM papers and other relevant websites alongside the relevant books and conference talks they already have? What if they indexed good content sources such as YouTube recordings, or partnered with associations for content, such as USENIX or ATD instead of just including ATD books mixed in with all the others?

Is a boring list of books really the best presentation? And why mix in book chapters so often, it’s annoying to go from a book chapter to the full book on mobile, you basically have to do another search for the book title directly.

Are there alternatives, or ways for me to access this through the library? For me, yes. But at this point in my career I find more value in materials not in O’Reilly learning’s books - I’ll learn more from a self-published title, sooner, for example.

Once upon a time, it felt like the bookstore had all the books on every topic… these days, open publishing is everywhere and the bookstore’s selection often feels limited to popular titles. Are there exceptions? Absolutely. But I’m tempted to buy those when I see them, now, if I have no other way of accessing them (e.g. Skillsoft).

mymllnthaccount 4 years ago |

The price from O'Reilly is 50/month or 500/year.

I think there is a lot of content there, but I'm also finding it hard to stomach their pricing. $100/year was a no brainer (or whatever the membership fee for ACM was). I would probably do $200 or maybe even $300/ year.

But $500!! Maybe I'll try talking my employer into paying for it.

srazzaque 4 years ago | |

I'd wager that employers/corporates are precisely their target market with this sort of pricing.

JJMcJ 4 years ago | | |

Similar to conferences - $2500 plus travel means only a few successful consultants will go on their own money.

alexott 4 years ago | | |

For corporate customers it usually costs significantly less. Few years ago I worked in a very big company, and as I remember, O'Reilly subscription cost per person was < $50

derekp7 4 years ago | |

What I do to beet the $500/year pricing is to buy 1 month, then immediately cancel (so it doesn't auto-renew). I then have 30 days to read through whatever I find interesting. Then I get another $50 1/month subscription whenever I need to find something new, which maybe happens a couple times a year.

commandlinefan 4 years ago | |

> I would probably do $200

They used to run specials for "half off" (when they were charging $400), and I felt like I was getting value for my money then. But yeah, any more than that, it's just not worth it, unfortunately.

miguendes 4 years ago |

Oh what a shame, I was planning to sign up for ACM next week. Unfortunately, that was a predictable move from O’Reilly. I bet most of the folks signing up for ACM were actually after O’Reilly’s contents.

I think the only cheaper alternative is during Black Friday period where they give a 100 usd discount.

tedmiston 4 years ago | |

Correct on Black Friday being the best and perhaps only major discount for O'Reilly Learning. Historically he Black Friday price is 50% off, at $199 down from the regular price of $399 [1]. It looks like they've raised the normal price to $499 now, so I would expect $249 on Black Friday this year.

Note: There is a significant typo in the article below, in that the renewal price in subsequent years does stay at the discounted rate. I've been subscribing since it was called Safari Books and still on the discounted rate.

[1]: https://slickdeals.net/f/13605994-year-of-o-reilly-online-le...

tssva 4 years ago |

Check with your local library. Many public libraries provide free access to O'Reilly for card holders.

brian_spiering 4 years ago | |

Thank you for the tip. The partnership is called "O'Reilly for Public Libraries". I just logged onto the full O’Reilly Learning platform through my San Francisco public library account.

_fs 4 years ago | | |

Just a heads up, you are not getting the full library from San Francisco public library. There are multiple levels of subscriptions offered to libraries. SFPL gets about most of the books, while san mateo has a better subscription and get's more. I have never seen any state library offer the full Oreilly library, but some colleges and the military libraries offer full access. SFPL is missing many of the newer books that have been released.

elemos 4 years ago | |

A lot of employers do as well. I can’t think of a cheaper continuing education type of service that a company can provide.

If they don’t, your manager could probably get it approved with little effort.

yftsui 4 years ago | |

My local library Safaribooks has very limited selections compared with a paid O’Reilly subscription, the most obvious one is there is no video content.

tssva 4 years ago | | |

There are varying levels of access libraries can pay for. You may want to make a suggestion to your library to up their subscription plan.

digianarchist 4 years ago | |

Toronto public library offers access

yowmamasita 4 years ago |

Just in case anyone's looking for a way to download books or videos off the platform, I compiled instructions here https://github.com/yowmamasita/download-oreilly-books

picoico 4 years ago |

I've cancelled Netflix and now I'm cancelling O'Reilly. The excuse they're giving is that they need to raise prices to compensate content creators. I'm all good with the latter part, but as far as I'm concerned, that's their headache not mine. Is your business not viable? You can't grow, so you take it out on your customers? 500+/yr is not worth the occasional browsing/reference I do.

Geez, I mean the typical O'Reilly publication is quite expensive as it is, and I'm finding self-published books are typically more useful anyway. I wonder how much of the cost actually goes to the content creator, and how much to the publisher for the honor of having O'Reilly stamped on the front cover...

m1keil 4 years ago |

Wow their pricing gone through the roof. Few years ago they charged about 250-300ish. They provide lots of content but I wish there was a more tiered approach as I mainly use it for the books. At 500$ I think it will be cheaper for me just buying the books instead.

stan53 4 years ago |

What content was available? I remember in 2020 the O'Reilly live training and some other features were removed from the ACM membership: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23474068

I also remember that I was not able to retain the access to the Live training recordings I had from the ACM membership when I bought a paid O'Reilly membership. Only after writing to the customer service they agreed to link a "reasonable amount" (maybe 15 sessions as far as I remember) of live training recordings to my new account. Felt like a scam.

unmole 4 years ago |

Does anyone know of a way to download videos from O'Reilly for personal use?

yowmamasita 4 years ago | |

https://github.com/yowmamasita/download-oreilly-books I compiled the instructions here

unmole 4 years ago | | |

Thanks! I ended up reaching the same Chrome extension.

uticus 4 years ago |

The benefit for me has been the ability to skim books. I'd love to learn there was an alternative way to skim or form an opinion about a book, before buying.

Normally I would treat buying nonfiction as something worthwhile. But buying a book related to software is often a great way to purchase something irrelevant six months later. O'Reilly enables me to check out new stuff, form opinions about the keepers, and read about the latest stuff that I know will be replaced very soon but is in hot demand right now.

driscoll42 4 years ago |

Looks like it might be time to download everything I care about and spin up a Calibre server finally.

throwaway158497 4 years ago |

Anyone knows a good API to access books in my library? It is 2021 and there is no App which sends me daily notifications of what I must read. It is insane. The book is already checked out. I just need a remainder to read it or a random page given to me.

unmole 4 years ago | |

> It is 2021 and there is no App which sends me daily notifications of what I must read.

Everyday we stray further from the light of the gods.

markus_zhang 4 years ago |

I login through the temp access page using my student account. I don't know whether they check it actually if you get the right domain name.

GVRV 4 years ago |

Is this US/location dependent? I'm an ACM member from India and I've not received any such communication.

gere 4 years ago | |

I am in Germany and (unfortunately) I have received the email yesterday.

raknaz 4 years ago | |

im from India, i received email as well

bharatm 4 years ago | |

I m from India,i too got it.

yesfitz 4 years ago |

ACM = Association for Computing Machinery

nomad1987 4 years ago |

not super helpful right now, but they always have 50% off black friday sales