Packt
Encyclopedia
Packt, pronounced Packed, is a print on demand
Print on demand
Print on demand , sometimes called, in error, publish on demand, is a printing technology and business process in which new copies of a book are not printed until an order has been received...

 publishing company based in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, UK.

Company

Packt published its first book, Mastering phpMyAdmin
PhpMyAdmin
phpMyAdmin is an open source tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL with the use of a Web browser. It can perform various tasks such as creating, modifying or deleting databases, tables, fields or rows; executing SQL statements; or managing users and...

 for Effective MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...

 Management
, in April 2004, and continues to specialize in publishing focused books on specific technologies and solutions. The company claims that it supports and publishes books on smaller projects and subjects that standard publishing companies cannot make profitable. The company's business model, which involves print on demand publishing and selling direct, enables it to make money selling books with lower unit sales. The aim of this business model is to give authors high royalty rates and the opportunity to write on topics that standard publishers tend to avoid.

Books

Packt offers PDF versions of all of their books for download and in August 2010 began offering them in ePub format. These eBooks were made free from digital rights management
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...

 in March 2009. Some (but not all) Packt books are also available via the Safari Books Online
Safari Books Online
Safari Books Online LLC is a digital library founded in July 2001 and headquartered in Sebastopol, CA with offices in Boston, MA and San Francisco, CA...

 system.

PacktLib

PacktLib is Packt's online digital book library. Launched in August 2010, PacktLib allows users to access and search across Packt's entire library of books, finding practical solutions to searches at the click of a button.

Packt Enterprise and Packt Open Source

In April 2010, Packt launched two new brands, Packt Enterprise and Packt Open Source, with the release of Microsoft Silverlight
Microsoft Silverlight
Microsoft Silverlight is an application framework for writing and running rich Internet applications, with features and purposes similar to those of Adobe Flash. The run-time environment for Silverlight is available as a plug-in for web browsers running under Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X...

 4 Data and Services Cookbook and Moodle 1.9 Theme Design. Packt Enterprise focuses on technologies produced by businesses for use in other corporations, while Packt Open Source focuses on technologies built around open source licences.

These two brands do not encompass all of Packt's books, and it will continue to publish into areas which are not necessarily classifiable as open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 or enterprise

Open Source Project Royalties- Believe in Open Source

Packt supports and promotes Open Source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 projects and concepts. When a book written on an Open Source project is sold, Packt pays a royalty directly to that project. This scheme has resulted in the company providing sustainable revenues to many of the Open Source projects since 2004.

In March 2011, following its 'Believe in Open Source campaign' Packt announced that its donations to Open Source projects have surpassed the $300,000 mark.

Open Source Awards

The Open Source Awards, launched as the Open Source CMS Award in 2006, was created with the aim of encouraging, supporting, recognizing and rewarding Open Source projects. The Open Source Award was re-launched in July 2010 to allow a wider range of Open Source projects to enter the contest.

In November 2006, Joomla!
Joomla!
Joomla is a free and open source content management system for publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets and a model–view–controller Web application framework that can also be used independently....

 was announced as the first winner of the Award receiving $5,000. Drupal
Drupal
Drupal is a free and open-source content management system and content management framework written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It is used as a back-end system for at least 1.5% of all websites worldwide ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political, and...

 finished second receiving $3,000 with Plone
Plone
Plone can mean:* Plone , a British band* Plone , a content management system...

 finishing third and receiving $2,000.

Since 2006, Packt has ran the Award annually, each time expanding the categories and prize money to benefit the Open Source community.

Previous winners in the Awards vary from WordPress
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...

 to MODx :

In 2010, the launch of the Open Source Awards saw Packt expand the Award categories and prize money to $24,000.

The winners in the 2010 Open Source Awards are as follows:
  • Open Source CMS: CMS Made Simple
    CMS Made Simple
    CMS Made Simple is a free open source content management system to provide developers, programmers and site owners a web-based development and administration area.- Software Design :...

  • Hall of Fame CMS: WordPress
    WordPress
    WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...

  • Most Promising Open Source Project: Pimcore
    Pimcore
    pimcore is a browser-based free and open source modular content management system and web framework for creating and managing websites and web applications released under the terms of the BSD Licence...

  • Open Source E-Commerce Applications: PrestaShop
    PrestaShop
    PrestaShop is an e-commerce solution which is free for the basic kernel and open source. It supports payment gateways such as Google Checkout, PayPal and Payments Pro via API. Further payment modules are offered commercially....

  • Open Source Graphics Software: Blender
    Blender (software)
    Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, interactive 3D applications or video games. The current release version is 2.60, and was released on October 19, 2011...

  • Open Source JavaScript Libraries: jQuery
    JQuery
    jQuery is a cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML. It was released in January 2006 at BarCamp NYC by John Resig...


Article Network

In April 2007, Packt launched its Article Network and now publishes around 20 articles each month. The Article Network is a free collection of articles and book excerpts written by professionals and developers from around the world. These articles cover technologies related to both the Packt Open Source brand, such as Ubuntu
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...

, and the Packt Enterprise brand, such as SOA
SOA
-Computers, Science, engineering and information technology:* Service-oriented architecture, type of software architecture for creating and using business processes, packaged as services...

.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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