Negative Webmonkey Editorial on Andover/VA Merger

BigTed writes "Webmonkey has got an interesting article up about the VA Linux takeover of Andover and its effect on *gasp* Slashdot and the Open Source Community." Personal note: I almost quit when I heard about the merger, because I had exactly the same worries Jay Greenspan expresses in this editorial. Since then I have been personally reassured by Larry Augustin that VA Linux has no desire to mess with the content on any Andover site, including Slashdot. I'm posting this story, even though we've been over this ground before, primarily so that we don't get accused of bias by not posting it. And yes, we will continue to post news of Red Hat, Penguin Computing, and others in the Linux corporate community, same as before. Everyone who works on Slashdot, and everyone in Andover.net management, has sworn to defend Slashdot's editorial independence. Period. - Robin 'roblimo' Miller, Editor-in-Chief, Andover.net. Update: 02/09 05:16 by CT : here is a Salon Story by Andrew Leondard expressing the same concerns as the webmonkey bit.

Comments

but you see that is the problem

[Hobbex]

I'm posting this story, even though we've been over this ground before, primarily so that we don't get accused of bias by not posting it.

You can't force yourself to be impartial, and in the end, if the /. article writers are always worrying about not seeming biased, it will be just as bad as if you blatently were. You can't post every article that is negative about VA, but whenever you don't, I can promise people will jump on you for it.

Having a communal site like Slashdot owned by strong corporate interests is simply a bad idea, and I just don't think it can work out in the long run. There is an element of trust in the fact that community is willing to let a couple of people decide over what topics will be discussed here, and that trust is human, not corporate. I think the reason there is so much antagonism against Jon Katz here is that many of us feel he is abusing that trust, using Slashdot as a pulpit for his own preachings rather than choosing stories for us.

Having Slashdot owned by Andover was one thing, because Andover was a web company based on the idea of selling banner ads, and therefore had the very clear of objective of getting as many readers to return here as often as possible. With VA it is a lot more fuzzy. VA obviously do not have banner adds as their main source of income, so they have other agendas for wanting to own (even if you keep claiming they have no control over) the backbones of the community.

The relationship between the Slashdot community and VA Linux is somewhere between mutualistic and parasitic, and I share many peoples concern that it is leaning toward the latter. I guess it should come as a bucket of cold water to those who keep claiming that the influences of corporations and money will not harm the open source community, that they started by grabbing our favorite node for discussion right from our grasp...

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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.