... before the municipalities claim copyrights over photos taken in cities!

Did you evaluate the possibility of selling a PDF copy from your website yourself? I am not author but based on my experience with the lonely planet guides as well as a couple of books from the "pragmatic programmers" I started liking the ease of using the e-books. That said it is also important that your book is discoverable by it's target audience. Getting it published from the likes of O'Reilly would make it easy for many people who are looking for open-source related books (thats where I would first search), but if you think that your book has enough unique stuff and that you can make it easily discoverable over the search engines, nothing like publishing it in the form of an e-book (from your own website)!

I know that a car dealer would not do that to me, but at the same time, he would not ask me to accept a EULA to use the steering wheel. Let Lenovo ask the user to accept the EULA before purchasing the computer and then I see your argument logical.

The shape looks familiar on Indian roads and even the steering wheel which has an "R" makes me think of the electric cars branded Reva in India. Is the the same thing? You can find Reva's home page at http://www.revaindia.com/