I've been a happy PacktPub customer for a few years now, i.e., I've bought some really good books (unprotected e-books) from them.
However, this "a free e-book every day" thing is a joke. I tried it for a few weeks, and it is their way of promoting or getting rid of books that nobody is buying (often somewhat dated too) and/or books that are simply lousy. In those few weeks, I didn't get a single useful free e-book, so it's a waste of time. It also clutters my PacktPub list of books in a directory/folder.
One more recent (1-2 years old) practise of
PacktPub that I detest is their fragmenting of a good author/book combo
into several books on the identical topic, subtitled "Intro",
"Cookbook", "Guide", "Building", etc. It's an obvious money-grab.
By the way, PacktPub and O'Reilly are in some amount of collaboration, with O'Reilly selectively offering some of the good PacktPub e-books. Those two companies do have some beliefs and practises in common, like unprotected e-books and fostering some excellent otherwise-unknown authors.
Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331