Slashdot Mirror
VA/Andover Complete Merger
chrisd sent us the press release and says "Now, it is completely okay to blame every percieved failing of Slashdot on VA. I'd like to say that VA understands that Slashdot only has value so long as it is left free." My comment is the same as always: our editorial independance is legally guaranteed under no matter who owns us. Slashdot will suck just as much as always, and there's nothing anybody can do about it!
Seriously, VA has a bunch of good guys, but the editorial staff is looking forward to not really having much to do with them *grin*.
When I first became addicted to slashdot, it must have been a lull period, because there didn't seem to be many discussions about Linux or quite so many vindictive articles attacking MS (my employer). The reason I started browsing, and the reason I keep coming back, is that I love to talk and argue about ethics and science, and we get those thing aplenty here.
It seems inevitable to me that some day Linux will no longer be the cool topic it is today. There will be another OS, maybe Hurd, maybe something else, that will be the focus of the adulation and the ecstasy so many of you pour out. But while tastes in operating systems will evolve, we now know that slashdot will not. It's owned by a Linux company. It will be about Linux until it goes off the air.
As long as I get my fix of straight talk and tech, I'll be happy to type slashdot.org in my browser, but I do mourn a little bit the passing of true independence from the site. The slashdot editors may be right that they have editorial independence when it comes to each individual story, but they have yet to flex their purported muscles when it comes to a major topic shift on the site. I wonder how receptive VA would be if CmdrTaco suddenly became infatuated with FreeBSD!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
If CmdrTaco 'suddenly' became infatuated with FreeBSD, then I am sure that he would post more FreeBSD story submissions and the rest would continue much like they presently do now.
The entire collection of people that comprise the slashdot crew give this site an overall flavor and style. Just like a recipe, change an ingredient or amount of an existing ingredient and the flavor will change. Sometimes a major change, sometimes just a subtle difference, *cough*DOJ*cough*. For you to assume that Slashdot & VA Linux will always be focused exclusively on Linux is as foolish as assuming that Microsoft will always be focused only on selling Windows versions for the PC market. They both will change to reflect evolutions in taste and market.
I think you would have to admit that it is usually the people involved that make a project or company sucessful, not a singular idea or concept.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
While I shouldn't respond to this (heck, I couldn't see it until I lowered my slashdot crap filter), I will.
With my, until now, casual viewings of slashdot over the past 2 years, even I know that they have already given money to the Open Source movement. Although, slashdot is not, per se, a Linux/Open Source site exclusively (hey, they have articles about science and books too, check them out sometime), they have embraced open source in three distinct ways (an example that I can borrow from church):
1. Their Time: The guys at Slashdot have devoted endless hours envangelizing (in a good way) Linux and Open Source in general (not to mention /. coding hours, but we'll get to that next). I am sure their participation in this exercise alone has brought both end users and actual coders to Open Source. Someone might come here because they hear it is a cool site ( despite rumors to the contrary on how much it sucks ), but they leave at least exposed to an idea that is put into active practice on this and other projects maintained by the /. crew. For this they should be given a pat of the back.
2. Their Talents: The /. guys have released the complete source of this site to the world at large under an Open Source license. Many, many hours have gone into created one of the more interactive news sites on the web and the fruits of that labor are available to anyone who is interested. For this, too, they should be given a pat on the back.
Finally, 3. Their Tithes: What was the first thing that these guys did, when they got the Andover money (well, maybe it was second or third, but it was up there)? After paying some of their volunteers, they gave thousands of dollars to the code and groups in the Open Source movement that they had a lot of respect for in the form of the beanie awards. Once again, for remembering the community that supports them, they should be given another pat on the back.
For these reasons, your post is way off base, and I am sure you already knew that. I just wanted people reading your post, who didn't understand this (perhaps a first timer) to realize why this is actually flamebait.
When I was in Washington D.C. for the A16 actions against the IMF/World Bank, some activists from England and I had a conversation with a journalist from some corporate newspaper (I forget which). The argument was over self-censorship, the fact that most journalists know where their bread is buttered and are never censored because they know to never write an article which merits censorship.
Now, the journalist insisted that he had full freedom of the press, and could write an article on anything he wanted without getting fired (He did admit that it's very possible that the editors wouldn't print it).
I told him to challenge the assumption that he had complete freedom under the totalitarian structure of his workplace. I asked him to dig up a story on the parent company or a majority stockholder of his newspaper. Something really incriminating, which is easy since so many large corporations are involved in criminal activity.
If he got the article printed, then I would concede the argument to him, but if it got censored, or if he felt repurcussions for challenging the authority of his workplace, then I win.
His response? Something to the effect of "Well, I don't need to test my boundaries, because I already know that I have no boundaries."
Thus, we have self-censorship.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
"Slashdot will suck just as much as always..."
Have faith, guys. I'm sure you'll suck much better from now on.
--
Wanna hook MAPI clients to your Tru64/AIX/Linux server?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
I dunno, I still have a hard time with one question which no one has been able to answer:
Why would a company such as VA spend $900 _million_ for a company that _lost_ $3 million last year, if they're truly not going to try and influence the stories covered?
Call me a pessimist, but as far as I've seen, the only reason a company spends such a ludicrous amount of money is when it expects to profit greatly from the venture. If Andover isn't making money - and a very questionable potential to do so - and they won't gain via propaganda, why would they do something so rediculous?!? I don't think that fostering the linux/geek community is worth nearly one _billion_ dollars.
I've yet to see anyone from VA or andover attmpt to quell my fears over that complaint. While there are various ways to explain the complaints of myself and many others who think that slashdot's quality has degraded since the andover buyout (not that I don't still love this site one hell of a lot), yet it's hard not to conclude that it's very likely that was _the_ cause.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
Regardless, good luck!
- tokengeekgrrl
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions
*joke*
Just so that everyone can complain together, can we agree that Slashdot officially started to suck immediately after this story was posted? Just for everyone to get their time lines synced.
For immediate release...
Microsoft asked the Department of Justice today to investigate monopolistic techniques used by Va Linux Systems to take over the Linux Market.
"We don't think it's fair! Microsoft is suppose to rule all operating systems", one employee commented.
If Microsoft is successful the Linux Community would be split up into 3 catagories. Newbies, Troll's and Guru's. Linux must also become closed source to ensure that they don't grow any more in size.
RMS was seen crying outside of his home earlier while Alan Cox was seen holding a shot gun and repeatly threating to blow up Microsoft. He since has been taken into protective custody.
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Actually, I was Slashdot user #357, and had been reading and posting comments on Slashdot before I heard of Andover, and only started posting on Slashdot as an author with Rob's approval. :)
True but untold story: the plan was for me to do hardly anything but submission bin reading and culling for at least the first month. This is how we started Emmett and Timothy, and it's the right way to bring someone new into Slashdot, with a chance to acclimate and fit into the mold before actually posting stories. I was only supposed to take some of the load off of Rob and Jeff, who had been running this site without a break and hardly even a day off for over two years at that point, not take over the whole thing.
But things got screwed up because the geek compound lost power and phone service the day after the Andover acquisition due to some horrible weather in Holland, and I was the only person around who had an author's login and could reach the server. For the next few days it looked like I (and therefore Andover) had totally taken control of Slashdot. Nobody wanted things to be that way. We all cringed at the way it looked, and I endured a lot of abuse over it, but there was no real choice.
Now we've got Timothy and Emmett going full time and doing a great job, plus Jamie and Cliff and Michael and Nik and Jim and others kicking in as often as they can, so I've settled into my "real" role, which is to spend most of my time making sure Slashdot and freshmeat remain free of editorial influence from marketdroids, advertisers, and PR people (including ours), and to do my best to fend off attacks from the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, the courts, and anyone else who comes along and thinks they, not you or Rob Malda or Jeff Bates, have a right to decide what does and does not belong on this site.
- Robin
Fact: We did give a lot of money and machines early on to slashdot before the andover purchase of /.. And we gave machines to everything2 (which is still owned by BSI). We give machines away all the time to groups, see kernel.org, linuxfromscratch and all the rest.
Fact: Show your proof, let's see it. IF it's real, it's a surprise. My conversation with rob when I heard about the andover thing was "So , do you want us to get in the mix on this." , his answer was no, so I dropped it.
Fact: Coldstorage was intended to be and became what sourceforge is, we jsut didn't like the coldstorage name. We knew there would be some freshmeat crossover, but they are very different sites. Big deal.
How can we cannabilize your volunteer project,?why did you stop? Was it because we "made" you stop? Or is it because you were not committed enough to finish? Even if we hadn't offered space and machinery for what you told us was going to be a gtk widget repository, why did you stop? You stopped, we didn'ty get in your way. Fact is we can't make -you- do anything, and we're not interested in having anyone stop giving back to linux. If you have such a big problem with us, go set up your own thing somewhere else. It's my impression you'd rather bitch about it.
Result: Keep your suspicison of VA, I'm fine with that. VA did purchase Andover, duh, when there is a merger whoever is bigger is by default the aquisitioner. As far as to whether we "ate" anyone, that's just stupid, in the adult world, people only merge when they want to.
As far as beinga paid mouthpiece, I am the person who comments on slashdot. That doesn't mean I lack ethics. My job is so much more than responding to this kind of bullshit.
Bowie, you have this vision of VA that is incorrect, it's too bad you can't see that. So, yes, I hope people keep both eyes and ears open, because then they will see how VA is not simply explointing linux like so many. I'd like to point out the bandwidth that we cover and hardware costs of sourceforge, and the public service mission of linux.com, or the many machines we gave away last year to projects big and small. Or the largest Friends and Family program that went off without trouble, benefitting a -great- number of developers.
Finally, VA does care, and not just because it has it (there are a number of very good business reasons to care), but because it wants to. We didn't get into linux just last year, or even just 5 years ago, we started in 1993 when everyone knew -everyone- who was in linux. And we were helping out back then, too.
We were there for people getting them hardware and stuff back when we were barely making payroll. Why? Because it was the right thing to do. Even now when VA is growing by a huge amount, we help out whenever we can. Because that is our duty, and we ake it very seriously.
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
With the recent merger of VA systems and Andover.net, Slashdot has gained an unreasonable degree of dominance over the web discussion market, claimed the Justice Department Wednesday. Negotiations are continuing between Andover lawyers and government officials, but a current plan would break Slashdot up into a number of competing operations, each in charge of one of its flagship products:
Slash: News for nerds
Dot: Stuff that matters
org: Hot Grits
A press release from CmdrTaco claims that they are cooperating with the Justice Department, but do not feel that criticism of their business as monopolistic is warranted. As competition in each of their major areas, Taco cited Kuro5hin, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the work of Jesustussinheadface.
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!