LWN.net Closing Down

Anonymous Coward writes "The best Linux news site is calling it a day. Citing money problems, they are saying next weeks issue will be the last. I've been reading LWN.net since the very beginning. They have always demonstrated sanity, restraint and professionalism along with thoughtful commentary - unlike certain other well known Linux news sites. Very sad." They've had problems since last fall. It's been a good four year run for them.

Comments

the writing is on the wall

[krog]

it makes me wonder when *ahem* certain other Linux news sites will fail as well.

LNUX closed today at $0.66, i think...

Re:the writing is on the wall

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this really worth fighting for? I'd rather dump money I earned working hotroding my civic than to hand it out to this worthless site.

When does Slashdot follow?

[MisterBlister]

This honestly isn't a troll. I'm just wondering how viable Slashdot is for the near future? Considering the well known "Slashdot" effect, they must pay a bundle on bandwidth charges each month, and 90% of the ads on the site seem to be for other OSDN sites, so I don't think they're pulling in any money there. I know they have subscriptions, but have THAT many people really signed up for them? How long until Slashdot is gone or goes a bit-more subscription based (ala Salon)? Anyone willing to make some public guesses?

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Surak]

Not too long before anything with decent content goes subscription based (excluding volunteer-run sites perhaps), except for the academic stuff, but then again, some universities have decided to restrict access to the 'good' content to behind the campus firewall, leaving just course descriptions and such publically accessible.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[sh0rtie]

Speaking as a experienced webdeveloper they could cut the bandwidth usage here at least in half by using stylesheets,removing whitespace in the source,and adhering to w3c standards in the html code , it would be quite trivial to convert and the time spent would == cash saved for the effort (and it would still work in lynx:)

we are always bashing people about standards , so why dont we take a leaf out of our own book and make this site/code/browsers use the technology available to us ?, it is 2002 after all not 1992.

heh or is it another case of "do as i say not as i do" ?

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[acceleriter]

Ah, but Salon has writers. Here, we're going to ask the users to do the writing, and charge them? No go. Perhaps a P2P solution over Freenet is the answer--see Freenet Message Board toward the middle of this page. All it would need is some tweaks to allow people to selectively view content signed with certain keys (editors?) and a mechanism for posters to have submissions signed and voila'--a /. replacement without the bandwidth costs.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[gmhowell]

Reading certain journals shows that VA is seriously in the shitter. Just go to any of the stock quote sites. Bill Gates has enough pocket change to buy the place and shut it down. That should show how little he cares about it.

Witness the recent posting caps placed on people with insufficient karma. Don't be surprised to see the discussion part of this board go all pay real soon. Remember, only front page views matter to them. If that truly is the case, it would be trivial to replace all of this dynamic crap with some static pages updated a dozen times per day.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[realdpk]

Another way they could probably make more money is if less people would block their ads. :)

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be a greater "revenge" if he bought it... AND KEPT IT! Imagine that... Bill Gates owning Slashdot.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Graymalkin]

How would slashdot charge a Salon style subscription fee? They don't own the comments posted nor the stories posted unless they're articles written by one of the editors which rarely happens. No one is going to pay to read Jon fucking Katz.

Salon actually produced content which they owned and could charge money for. Unless Rob and crew hire active posters to say shit about the article and get them to sign over rights to the work they couldn't sell shit. The subscription system as is is more of a tip jar than true subscription. Rob hiring members is not very likely considering his low opinion of the comments on the site.

If VA was going to go Chapter 7 they'd unload OSDN on the first company that would have them. Even though Linux is 80% hype a big name would still loave to have OSDN in the fold. VA gets scads of free advertising and just plain mindshare by owning OSDN. Slashdot and the other "news" sites handle the Linux hype machine for the OSDN sites while the real work gets done in Development and Media sites with complimentary stuff being sold through ThinkGeek. Anyone with even a remote interest in Linux would want OSDN's portfolio. I don't see slashdot tanking any time soon.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

if they didnt use doubleclick people probably wouldnt block them

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

They use Doubleclick? Guess if I didn't block ads, I might notice that.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[BrookHarty]

I resent that, filtering ads actually saves slashdot on bandwidth. (-;

My main news sites are la times, ny times, bbc and news.yahoo. If I could get a site that had as much news, and that many points of views, it would be worth my money. I hate reading 1 story and not getting all of the information.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Error27]

I'm interested to see a list of succesful "for pay" Linux websites. The fact is that professional websites are being put out of business by amature websites whether they are add based or "for pay".

Slashdot is a special case because it only creates a tiny bit of original content.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Tablizer]

(* Another way they could probably make more money is if less people would block their ads. *)

Hmmmm. Is there are market for ASCII-art ads?

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[gehrehmee]

Ask google. They're actually using ascii letters for that matter. ;)

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[orkysoft]

Ask the -1 Trolls. They seem experienced :-P

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

google seems to think so

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[nemesisj]

Another option would be to enable gzip compression on Apache. That would save probably 3/4 of the bandwidth they use, which is a huge immediate savings money-wise, and would greatly decrease load times.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google does well with text ads.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see a timeline.

1. I believe that it all started with a beige-box company called Fintronic which installed Linux on their boxes.
2. Then a couple years later, I think they changed their name to VA Linux.
3. Then there was an IPO.
4. Then they bought Slashdot.
5. I don't remember where OSDN came from.
6. And then they changed their name again to VA Software.
7. Next year they'll be out of the web business, and selling beige boxes again.
8. The name will revert to Fintronic.

Criswell has spoken!

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Tablizer]

(* they could cut the bandwidth usage here at least in half by...removing whitespace in the source... *)

Don't most routers and/or bandwith services compress that anyhow using Huffman-like compression?

True, just because it is compressed does not necessarily mean that you still don't get charged for it.

Also, whatever happened to micro-payments? I might pay for certain activities with small amounts equivalent to a nickle here and dime there.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[ftobin]

I should note that I not only block all Slashdot images, but I also have bought a subscription.

Re: When does Slashdot follow?

[Black Parrot]

> they could cut the bandwidth usage here at least in half by using stylesheets

Excuse me, could someone tell me which style I'm supposed to use for "first post" attempts? Also for "flamebait" posts, though of course I need the "first post" style right away.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[ftobin]

That's easy; follow the recent patterns: when the CEO sells their stock. Also, since we don't have Martha Stewart, look for when CowboyNeal dumps his.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously didn't check. They DO use gzip compression.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[demaria]

Wouldn't that also cause extra load on the slashdot web servers, or is gzip a really cheap operation?

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[jamie]

"Another option would be to enable gzip compression on Apache. That would save probably 3/4 of the bandwidth they use"

Gzip is already enabled. It saves more than 75%. It also obviates whitespace-compression and many of the other things that have been discussed in this thread...

Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a mod_perl/1.27 mod_ssl/2.8.10 OpenSSL/0.9.6d

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally bandwidth is more expensive than CPU time, so the benefits of gzip outweigh the negatives.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Eric S. Raymond can survive from day to day with the skills he has, I'm sure Rob will manage.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[MissMyNewton]

Nothin' new here...

Pud at F---edcompany.com will tell ya time and time again:

givin' stuff away for free (this means Linux, sites, etc) don't pay like it used to...

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[AxelTorvalds]

Your guess is as good as any, I would have guessed that VA would have done a lot of things by now to make more money form Slashdot and to reduce the expense.

I hate this. I really like LWN, it's new, it's not rumors and geek stuff, it's news about technical things in the world of Linux. I hate to see it go down.

I've been kicking this idea around some, a narrow pipe is cheap, why couldn't there be a syndication for web sites? If you had 100 sites hosting the same LWN content and could some how make sure that they were pretty well distributed then the cost of LWN becomes much cheaper. I'm thinking like FIDO net style in a way. Presuming that bandwidth and servers is their number one cost other than full time staff. I'm starting to think the next cool thing beyond the weblog is the syndicated web magazine, it could have editors, all that stuff and then they put it on line, rsync it to all the syndication sites. Then all you need is some way to pay the staff, the syndication sites could pay subscription fees, in exchange they get some control over an amount of content space. If you can get enough syndication sites then it's pretty cheap to become, right? Or if they don't have a staff providing content then it could be free to syndicate. It has to work because big corporations do it, we just need to scale it to hobby size.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

What browsers support it?

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[gerardrj]

No, most routers don't compress the traffic that traverses them.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[mlk]

Distubuted news sites, hasn't someone already done something like this?

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[jjv411]

I still think that donations are the way to go. I would definitely send a few bucks now and then for the bandwidth that I use. As soon as someone tells me how much my viewership is worth and demands payment, that is when I lose interest. If slashdot starts requiring me to pay $7/month ill probably stop reading, but if the put a donation cup out front, i might put in $15/month.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[nemesisj]

Not cool for pointing out the fact that I hadn't done my homework. Just not cool.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[stu72]

While no one can predict the fate of any given company, it's certainly interesting that VA Systems (/. owner) Chairman Larry Augustin has been cashing out big time over the last year:

He got paid $201,000 for 2001, a year in which, like all the rest, VA lost money. If that wasn't enough, he's been cashing out the stock all the way down:

http://us.biz.yahoo.com/t/86/43.html

What does that tell you about /.'s future?

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Sloppy]

Moore's law. CPUs are dirt cheap these days, and they're just getting faster and cheaper. Move everything to CPU that you can think of.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Inoshiro]

Yea, but then you save CPU time GZIPing the whitespace. There is a trade off for enefficiency somewhere, wether you pay for it with bandwidth used or CPU time used. I'm sure you guys aren't upgrading the cluster anytime soon, so why not switch to a less CPU-intensive-to-compress base page?

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[SN74S181]

Actually, the way it's been lately, I wonder if Apple is the one with their eyes on Slashdot. It sure seems, with all the new sections and topics, like the boys in the Compound are courting Apple.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[caferace]

That tells me he's trying to diversify his portfolio, as well as getting paid pretty fairly for a CEO of a company that once had a market cap of well over a billion.

Granted, back in "the day" Jim Barksdale (of former Netscape and FedEx fame) had a salary of 1$. *He* could afford it. Augustin may not be able to.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Amiga Trombone]

Ah, but Salon has writers. Here, we're going to ask the users to do the writing, and charge them?

Or course! And they ought to be charging Jon Katz a fortune!

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Apple owning VA makes horrible horrible sense... what a way to build your operatign system an open-source community...

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.zdnet.com

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Deluge]

Here, we're going to ask the users to do the writing, and charge them?

If you have a dedicated community which has an interest in keeping their meeting grounds alive, this could work. Look at, for example, the somethingawful.com forums. When those went pay, all the people who were the regulars ponied up because they wanted to remain a part of that community. Plus, it weeds out the trolls.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[r6144]

Here are a list of the ads I don't like:

1. Adult-content ads. Especially in many Chinese news sites, 70% of the ads are really bad for children. (Well, porn is illegal in China, isn't it?)
2. Animated ads. They distract me, and also consume my precious 4-year-old CPU's power all the time. For animated gifs, I just set galeon to animate just once. As of flash... I deleted the flash plugin.
3. Pop-ups, pop-unders, ads that insert their bookmark without my consent... some even change my system settings. Of course, such things are less likely on mozilla-based browsers, but sometimes you do have to use IE (on someone else's Windows machine, for example).

As long as Slashdot use ads that don't animate and are sufficiently geeky, I won't block them.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Cyberdyne]

Hmmmm. Is there are market for ASCII-art ads?

I don't know about ASCII-art ads, but these guys certainly think there's a market for plain old ASCII ads!

Re: When does Slashdot follow?

[hdparm]

Anonymous Coward Style, of course.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[SerpentMage]

Yeah, but VA is run like the shitter. Have you seen their SEC filing?

Income 51 million, Expenses Marketing 57, R&D 26, General and Administrative 51 million...

EXCUSE ME! But this company is run like a joke. Marketing ok that could be trimmed back. But what gets me is the GandA expense of 51 million. If you look at where this money is going it is going solely into administrative and legal expenses. OR MORE LIKELY, somebody is cashing in before the company folds entirely.

You know it pisses me because these are the same folks that want us to buy their stock, but yet they scam us. Let them fold, serve them right!

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[hdparm]

You, Geeks, are much more fun when bashing/flaming/trolling.

This reply is to the whole thread, since I just can't stand Slashdot in a murkey mood. There is no single thing in a world worse than sad, gloomy geeks.

However, parent attempt to be polite:

Pud at F---edcompany.com [fuckedcompany.com]

tells me that there is still hope!

Lighten up! The Good Thing (TM) is here to stay.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

When those went pay, all the people who were the regulars ponied up

Nope - pre-existing accounts remained free. Of course, most of us voluntarily contributed anyway.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Surak]

Slashdot is A) not a Linux site (running Linux and being ABOUT Linux are too different things) and B) actually creates quite a bit of original content...oh wait, JonKatz doesn't count, never mind. :)

And anyway, who said all the decent content was on Linux sites?

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[byran lei]

>The fact is that professional websites are being put out of business
>by amature websites whether they are add based or "for pay".
>Slashdot is a special case because it only creates a tiny bit of
>original content.
>
The truth is that a lot of these "professional websites" deserve to be put out of business. They tend to offer nothing but bloated graphics and poorly edited articles. How many of these "professional websites" for instance host stories concering Linux and BSD written by windows-using tech journalists who clearly didn't have a clue about either.

Face it, the people who create and maintain the "amature websites" have gotten it right. It's the "professional websites" who are run by fuck-ups like you who are running into trouble and getting what they deserve. Quite frankly the WWW was a better place before a lot of the "professional websites" started poping up and will be again after they are gone.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just another nail in the Linux coffin. Like most corpses, Linux has begun to bloat, and stink.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Error27]

LWN is of course an exception. Their reporting was always excelent and interesting.

I used to always read their front page and their kernel page. The kernel page was written by one of the authors of Linux Device Drivers which is an excelent resource.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[zsmooth]

They already did put the donation cup out... here

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

Raymond's got a wife with a good job. I expect that's what Malda is counting on as well. We used to have a term for "men" like that.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have managed to write a sentence that inspired an image of Martha Stewart watching CowboyNeal taking a dump. You deserve much moderation for that. I just can't decide which direction.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[183771]

From mod_gzip website:
"All you need is your current HTTP 1.1 compliant browser. All modern browsers released since early 1999 are already capable of receiving compressed Internet content via standard IETF Content Encoding if they are HTTP 1.1 compliant."

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[p_trinli]

Adhere to open standards? Pfft. I think they'll do that right about the time they admit their MP3 habit is theft.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when does slashdot have decent content? Mostly just a few gems to graze over and then read the comments from so many clueless twits (which is why it is fun to read at -1)

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

When the owner has no confidence in his ownings... That still says something.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slash is just one giant experiment in hypocrisy. The head of VA probably logs on every day and guffaws himself silly at all the crap he hosts here every day. It's ptobably the only reason he continues to pay for it. You can't find true comedy like this anywhere else.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[stu72]

Oh come on, that's what they all say. Diversifying and selling before the bottom falls out look the same to you & me, so how would you know? His, "diversifying", looks an awful lot like cashing in, given that he's sold off almost all shares he had, and has filed the intent to sell most of the rest.

And what does it matter that inflated market cap VA once had? Profits are what matter, and VA's never had any of them, so what on earth are management getting paid for? /.?

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[slashclone]

I'm pretty sure that the biggest drain for VA SOFTm finances is coming from the 6 figure salries Taco and his posse command. Replacing the incompetent editors with a group of volunteers would solve 3/4 of the problem

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could probably donate more if you didnt spend so much $$ on pr0n.

How'd you let this one slip by, guys?

[Anonymous Coward]

They have always demonstrated sanity, restraint and professionalism along with thoughtful commentary - unlike certain other well known Linux news sites. Very sad.

I'm surprised this not-so-veiled insult made it onto the front page...

Re:How'd you let this one slip by, guys?

[linuxrunner]

probably because....
It's more true than you realize....

When VA Linux does close, please pass on SlashDot to me.
Seriously: Talk to me first, I'll buy it, whatever.

Make some changes:
Add many admins to help add news, write news, etc. Not the same three people.
Take away admin moderator points. You're biased therefore you shouldn't mod. Same reason I can't mod a thread I posted in.....

I'd even drop the adds, or add affordable text ads, so people can plug their own sites.. not something that costs 400 bucks or more but 5 bucks... or less.

Remember, consider me!!!

Re: How'd you let this one slip by, guys?

[Black Parrot]

> > They have always demonstrated sanity, restraint and professionalism along with thoughtful commentary - unlike certain other well known Linux news sites. Very sad.

> I'm surprised this not-so-veiled insult made it onto the front page...

Proving that the editors not only don't read the stories, they don't even read the screedle that introduces the stories.

Re:How'd you let this one slip by, guys?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, they've already got something like that

Re:How'd you let this one slip by, guys?

[Jonny 290]

Yeah, the 10,000 user weblog with articles about cooking salmon on a budget, how to chew smokeless tobacco, how the existentialist movement ties in with the Mayan-American work ethic with regard to organic farming in the Mississippi Delta, and articles by supposed 20-year veterans about how it's "too hard" to build your own machine?

It's all about Plastic. Wit everywhere, and even the fluff is more interesting.

Re:How'd you let this one slip by, guys?

[p_trinli]

Go for it. When you do, please use valid XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets. It's sad, but almost funny in its irony: Slashdot will post about incremental Linux kernel patches and always harps about open standards, but Slashdot HTML is several versions behind the times.

Re:How'd you let this one slip by, guys?

[TheAwfulTruth]

And get rid of the damn Karma Krap and rating system. It's like a KKK ralley in here. If someone says something, ANYTHING, that ruffles feathers, mass suppression takes place. There should be a way of removeing truly offtopic posts. But just because someone points out something that is in any way anti-whateverthecrowdlovesandcandonowrong there is no reason to mod the person out of existance because you don't want to hear it. It's like 10,000 people with their hands over their ears yelling "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALA".

Thus my sig. You have to wade through a lot of pure crap it's true, but the amount of real, unbiased information (Such as Reiser not really being a journalling file system) that gets moded to -1 is shameful. A tragedy really. /.'s one true failing.

Ouch!

[Anonymous Coward]

"They have always demonstrated sanity, restraint and professionalism along with thoughtful commentary - unlike certain other well known Linux news sites. Very sad."

Shots taken AT Slashdot ON Slashdot. Usually I have to atleast read the comments for that.

Hmm...

[User 956]

They have always demonstrated sanity, restraint and professionalism along with thoughtful commentary - unlike certain other well known Linux news sites.

Oh, you shouldn't say that about Slashdot...

Re:Hmm...

[SlugLord]

It's always good to see the real human beings who understand that all news reporting comes with a slant, and that some (though surely not Slashdot) is more biased than others.

I read everything here with a suspicious eye, though I think that some of the most suspicious (of government and big companies anyway) persons are probably trusting of Slashdot in its ability to provide knowledgeable, minimally-biased news.

unlike certain other...

[Anonymous Coward]

They have always demonstrated sanity, restraint and professionalism along with thoughtful commentary - unlike certain other well known Linux news sites.

News sites like Slashdot?

Re:unlike certain other...

[Anonymous Coward]

/. is a news site?

And the ironic part is...

[toupsie]

You never hear of a BSD site going out of business despite all the claims of its death on Linux sites...

(linux * 3) < darwin

Re:And the ironic part is...

[SN74S181]

Unfortunately Darwin isn't a BSD. It's a parody of a BSD, brought to you by Apple. It can die just as fast as MkLinux did. As soon as it becomes less in vogue to hype having 'Unix origins,' it can be absorbed into MacOS like water into the desert sand.

Re:And the ironic part is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude...stay away from the purple-ringed mushrooms!

Re:And the ironic part is...

[Anonymous Coward]

But those are the best kind!

Re:And the ironic part is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Steve.

Got any good coke these days?

How's Woz? You don't know???

Re:And the ironic part is...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.freebsdzine.org/

One of those on my bookmark...
It cost $$$ and time to publish news, LWN even track kernel patches closely, which no one else had been able to keep up.

$linux * 20 < $darwin
Did you pay the full price for OS 10.2 after you paid full price for 10.1?

Alternatives please?

[kir]

This question obviously would not get posted to "Ask Slashdot", but I'm still curious.

What sites do you, the full-on geek slashdot community, think deserve my readership after next week's closing of lwn?

Loads of linux news sites are out there, from home-grown to corporate backed, but I've yet to find one that comes close to the professional and relevant lwn (not that I was looking hard - after all, I love lwn). Lay it on me!

Re:Alternatives please?

[diaphanous]

For news on linux kernel development:

Kernel Traffic
KernelTrap

Re:Alternatives please?

[Bob_Robertson]

http://www.LinuxToday.com
http://linuxdailynews.net/
But unfortunately, nothing compares to the marvelous all-in-one that LWN had. Once I discovered it, it was my apointment on Friday afternoon.
Bob-

Re:Alternatives please?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

My favorite is still Linux Today. But perhaps something different might be in order for the future.

All of the Linux news sites, big and small, seem to be loaded with content pulled from other sites. Indeed, many of the sites make their headlines available in an easily parseable, machine-readable format. Wouldn't it be great, if instead of putting all of the bandwidth etc. expense burden on a few supersites, to have a network of smaller sites all sharing the news articles, and each doing a little reporting and scavenging to contribute.

I know, this sounds vaguely like UseNet, but I'm talking about something with a better signal-to-noise ratio. Something where you have to work a little bit to get things set up and on the sharing network, but once you're online you can provide news for a small group of users without getting killed on the bandwidth costs.

Alternatively, the megasites could eliminate interactive portions like talkbacks/comments entirely, and the community could create a volunteer-run caching network similar to Akamai. Naturally, the megasites themselves would have to return to being noncommercial; nobody wants to spend their own money to voluntarily help some other for-profit organization stay afloat (as Mandrakesoft found out when they tried it).

Ok, these ideas aren't fully thought through, but the point is that there are ways of keeping Linux news sites running out there without having to resort to subscription-based content.

And for ordinary discussions and conversations, I suggest that everyone do what they did in the 1990's: find a nice BBS that you're comfortable on and make it your home. A good one is listed below in my sig, but there are hundreds, possibly thousands more. The community BBS is alive and well, despite CmdrTaco et al's best efforts to try and convince the world that it's a thing of the past.

oh man

[Anonymous Coward]

lwn.net is my favourite site. I have been reading there for a long time now. well at least I still have linux.com and kerneltrap.com

Gone from the future, and the past....

[zapp]

The sad thing about the Internet, is not necessarily that when a site shuts down it stops putting up new content, but in many cases the archived information on the site disappears.

Yes I know about the Internet archiving effort (www.archive.org), but in many cases the sites going under had streaming video or audio, which is lost forever.

Re:Gone from the future, and the past....

[Angus McNitt]

I agree. Many is the day that I go back to a bookmarked reference, just to find a 404 page instead. I kinda wonder how many times we end up re-inventing the wheel because of it. Or, in most cases I come across, waste hours troubleshooting a problem that has already been solved.

I ended up making local (digital or paper) copies of most important stuff I come across. You would be suprised how many Win 3.x questions we stil get and hard it is to find good answers.

Re:Gone from the future, and the past....

[Alien Being]

in many cases the archived information on the site disappears.
Like Al Gore.

Re:Gone from the future, and the past....

[NanoGator]

That's true, but sometimes opportunities grow that way.

There once was a very popular site for creating 3D Art called 'scifi-art.com'. It was hobbyist, not a professional deal. It had some 3000 members at it's peak. (Possibly more, this is all from memory here.) One day, though, the owner of the site realized that he was unable to maintain his hobby anymore, and he took the site down.

It was a sad day for a lot of us because we lost a great place to proudly display our work. However, within a couple of weeks a new site was formed. You see, the owner of SFA struck a deal with the owner of another site and migrated the forums and users databases over. Result? Scifi-meshes.com emerged. All the threads were back and all the users were migrated over. SFA was gone, but SFM picked up where they left off!

The owner of SFM has a renwed energy that the previous didn't, and now he's turned it into a place where people can not only learn how to improve their skills, but compete with other people as well. He's running contests now and giving prizes away.

I'm seriously impressed with how this came out! I don't think it would have happened if SFA hadn't gone down. So who knows? LWN may be down for now, but perhaps somebody will be able to pick up the database and move on?

Re:Gone from the future, and the past....

[caferace]

Try this. Carelessly install and upgrade Mozilla a few times. Even better, try installing it and uninstalling Netscape 4.x simultaneously.

Poof. Your 404 bookmarks are gone. Not restored though. :)

Give the wayback time machine a shot...

Re:Gone from the future, and the past....

[Turmio]

Fortunately, we're not going to loose the content of LWN.

We'll have more information next week on things like content tarballs and releasing the site source.
-- http://lwn.net/Articles/5052

Very cool. Bookmarks won't work, of course, but the content can be found somewhere as probably dozens of LWN replicas will offer it.

Re:Gone from the future, and the past....

[Angus McNitt]

If I was going to do that, I would fire up my old Win2K box and use IE. No more 404, just stupid MSN search pages.

how ironic

[rigelstar]

I have never heard of this Linux news site before for some reason. Now, seeing the site, it looks like a useful site that I would have visited daily. I wonder how many sites like this crumble do to lack of knowledge of their existence. Advertise!

Re:how ironic

[linuxrunner]

Advertise?
Did you miss the part about money problems?

Or have you been visiting moneytree.com again?

Re:how ironic

[rigelstar]

Well I was simply saying that maybe if that had advertised maybe more people like me would have visited the site and found it useful, hence the irony.

Re:how ironic

[Requiem]

Difficult, given the number of people that block ads...

Re:how ironic

[linuxrunner]

I know.. I was just joking...
What we really need is a free exchange of ad (possibly text ads) between sites again.

Remember the link exchanging of a few years back??? How about something similar but with simple rotating text ads. I'll show you yours, if you show me mine!

Calling all trolls!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring forth the "Linux is dying" posts!

Go!!! Go!!!

Re:Calling all trolls!

[SN74S181]

There's no irony in a 'Linux is dying' troll.

It just doesn't work, on any level.

Trolls leer away from reality like you wouldn't believe.

Of course I'm contradicting all of this by making this post.

Here, I'll cancel some of the contradiction out by posting it without clicking 'Post Anonymous'. No +1, though, so be nice, boys....

Re:Calling all trolls!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say that Linux is dying but to die you have to have actually lived. And that hasn't happened yet. Maybe 5-10 yeards from now? But I said that 5-10 years ago and nothing happened so I'm not holding my breath.

Thats too bad

[captredballs]

LWN is one of my favorite and daily sites.

I've been wondering if a new solution for the "money problems" involved in running a big site could be solved in part with freenet or some other distributed peer to peer network system. People would, it some sense, be donating their bandwidth. I don't know how you would insure that you were getting the actual site and not a rip-off, though.

Re:Thats too bad

[Rebel Patriot]

The problem, if you read the article, isn't lack of money to buy bandwidth, but rather lack of money to pay writers. Just like salon.com, lwn.net has writers that want money. They haven't been paid for awhile, and so isntead of going WAY in debt, they're folding before the ship completely sinks.

Re:Thats too bad

[AmericanInKiev]

If their writers just had day jobs, they could write an article a week, donate the article to the public via LWN and pay themselves with the tax deduction. Get the public to pay for what the public consumes.

AIK

Re:Thats too bad

[Micah]

In addition to the other (correct) reply, I recall reading that their bandwidth has been donated for quite a while, by Rackspace. So it's not a b/w issue at all.

Re:Thats too bad

[captredballs]

Busted.

I was on my way out the door and posted without reading the article ;-) I usually read the articles before opening my pie hole. Really, I swear!

Now I'm getting home and I'm tired, so I'm posting again... without reading the article ;-)

Re:Thats too bad

[byran lei]

>The problem, if you read the article, isn't lack of money to buy
>bandwidth, but rather lack of money to pay writers. Just like
>salon.com, lwn.net has writers that want money.
>
Lwn actually *PAID* people to write the stuff on their site? For what? All they basically did was stick a lwn tag on things you already knew from sites like Slashdot,Usenet and other disscusion sites and places.

Re:Thats too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that's getting the general public, most of whom hasn't even heard of Linux and can barely turn on a computer, to pay writers for the Linux community.

The writers do/did have day jobs, writing. Why should they continue to do it for free?

Re:Thats too bad

[AmericanInKiev]

I should think a great deal of the public has used Google or benefited by someone who has - they could afford a penny a year towards Linux.

If you get a tax break in return for your work - it's not really doing it for free.

Not very AC if you ask me

[gmhowell]

When one has an email address listed, how are you any more anonymous than anyone else on slashdot? FWIW, at 11:11 EDT, it's listed as:

????@standardalternative.net

(? to replace name in case one of the editors... edits)

But, yes, it is very sad. Sad that professionalism and rationality lose out to childish posing and ranting.

Re:Not very AC if you ask me

[Anonymous Cowrad]

Well, he doesn't have an account here, and is therefore an Anonymous Coward as far as slashdot is concerned.

All the cool kids have slashdot accounts, you know.

Re:Not very AC if you ask me

[gmhowell]

I stand corrected/informed.

Re:Not very AC if you ask me

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're actually not corrected, because the information you were given is wrong. The poster did it that way on purpose, for some reason.

If you're not a registered /. user, then the link is whatever name you specify, linked to the e-mail address you specify. If you give an e-mail address but no name, you'll automatically get Anonymous Coward, though it'll still be linked by e-mail.

If you *are* a /. user, and you're not logged in when you submit a story, the same deal happens - Name with markup to e-mail address. The only way you can get credit for submitting stories, even if you use your /. username and e-mail address, is to be logged in on the main page when you click "Contribute Story".

It will be missed...

[ninjaz]

This is a sad day for me. I've been reading LWN since it started, and they have always had excellent reporting and editorial content.

Their long memories, digging deep enough to get at the meat of the stories and excellent security coverage for Linux & *BSD will be sorely missed.

LNUX and Linux are Dying

[Stock Quote Troll]

You heard it here first!

LNUX will be de-listed on August 17th

good point

[Frothy Walrus]

This is a good point. The Editors have not said boo lately about subscriptions -- I bet you a dollar that means they didn't get jack. Please read on before modding me.

Mr Malda can take this as a lesson. Rusty from k5 rustled up about $35,000 by passing the hat around, and at last count Slashdot had collected about 1/10 that, for offering "premium" service. It goes to show, if you treat your users with respect to the point of fanaticism, they will hold you in high regard with similar vigor. If you irritate 50% of them at any given time, you get it right back.

It looks like the Internet Age is heading towards dusk for VA; it's spent well over a month under $1 and will most likely be delisted when things in the stock market loosen up a bit.

Can Slashdot go free again? Without a change in leadership, I'm not so sure.

Re:good point

[SN74S181]

One of the problems that I see with OSS websites, both news and content-based is that the independent sites were all swallowed up. SourceForge for what it's worth is a big honking single entity. I go to links for all sorts of coding projects from old tarballs and they all head from independent sites to the big leviathan.

If SourceForge were to close down, all those projects would be scattered. Hopefully all the viable ones would find new hosts.

The same is true of sites like slashdot. It's now a captive dependent of VA.

In a way it's a crying shame, but we will see, things could improve.

Re:good point

[Herschel Cohen]

When LWN was soliciting funds, I was also losing my email address. I sent a note about both, but somehow I never got a response. Much later on my own I sent some cash and only recently added them to my bookmarks.

Conclusion - too few to do too much work. As for content they were the best, consistently covering all Linux news with an objective eye.

They will be sorely missed by me and I am sure others.

Re:good point

[irix]

The articles are miles above anything you'll see here, in both quality and quantity.

Says you. Some of us think that K5 sucks ass, especially after 9/11. There is so many poory written political navel gazing articles over there, I can't be bother to weed through the wheat to get to the chaff any more.

And how can you call the K5 moderation system top notch? There are so many people posting comments and then moderating down all of the responses that don't agree with them that I would call the K5 moderation system totally useless myself.

I was glad Rusty managed to raise some money and keep the site alive. Good for him and the people that enjoy K5. But lets not pretend K5 is a slashdot replacement - it isn't.

Re:good point

[Mike Markley]

> ...I can't be bother to weed through the wheat to get to the chaff any more.

Don't you mean that the other way around? Or do you typically skip the good stuff and dive right in for the junk? :)

Re:good point

[irix]

Ooooops. I hate it when mixing up the saying gets in the way of making my point :)

that's not the only problem

[krog]

Just because Slashdot might receive money for a while, doesn't mean it is safe from going to shit. Many would say it is already happening right now. Whatever one's opinion, it is true that new management and ownership by a larger company will only increase the chance that Slashdot will be ultimately controlled by people who don't give a shit. That's never good for a website. I wouldn't even rule out Rob and friends being deposed themselves.

I guess we'll wait and see...

Re:that's not the only problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"...increase the chance that Slashdot will be ultimately controlled by people who don't give a shit."

Man, where have you been. The "users who are more equal than the rest of us" don't give a shit. They have been pouting ever since it became clear that they are ultimately going to have to get a real job just to buy their pizza and tentacle rape anime.

No free publishing

[YahoKa]

The simple fact of e-publishing is that it costs money. You can't publish a book wihout people buying them, and likewise you cant publish a web page without getting money from somewhere. We now know that most web advertising is a flop, so subscriptions seem unavoidable. But if i read 10 news sites a day, i dont want to pay even $4 for each one because that sure adds up. If you can think of a solution please let me know, cus there is money to be made there.

Re:No free publishing

[AmericanInKiev]

Unless you donate each article to charity. Then the artwork is tax-deductable and you could in fact get paid for it.

All you need is a decent day job to provide a utilty for deductions, and you're off and running.

work for uncle sam all day - get it back by writing an article a week for LWN.

AIK

Re:No free publishing

[Sloppy]

We now know that most web advertising is a flop, so subscriptions seem unavoidable. But if i read 10 news sites a day, i dont want to pay even $4 for each one because that sure adds up. If you can think of a solution please let me know, cus there is money to be made there.

You've already admitted the only answer that can possibly work long-term. You just don't like it. TANSTAAFL. For your subscriptions to 10 web sites, you're getting something that, somehow, people used to live without.

BTW, if it really seems like a lot of money, take a look at a monthly cable TV bill.

Re:No free publishing

[Christopher Thomas]

The simple fact of e-publishing is that it costs money. You can't publish a book wihout people buying them, and likewise you cant publish a web page without getting money from somewhere. We now know that most web advertising is a flop, so subscriptions seem unavoidable. But if i read 10 news sites a day, i dont want to pay even $4 for each one because that sure adds up. If you can think of a solution please let me know, cus there is money to be made there.

Solution number one is to read fewer than 10 news sites in a day. You'd end up with a multi-tiered system with news sources feeding various news web sites (for a fee), and you subscribing to the news web site (or two) that best matched your interests.

IMO, this is what web news is most likely to converge on. We have the "multi-tiered split production and distribution" thing going already between Slashdot and similar news distributors, and the original articles they reference. All that needs to change is the billing structure.

The other option is to have a massively distributed web-news system, such that everyone was hosting from their own cached copies (with outgoing traffic self-throttling to prevent hot spots). This would effectively double everyone's news bandwidth costs, by bundling the outgoing distribution costs with incoming distribution costs. Unfortunately, there are problems:

• Everyone (or nearly everyone) has to be altruistic enough to host, and host fairly.
  If the ratio of downloaders to cachers/distributors gets too steep, costs for the distributors become prohibitive. Similar things happen if you have people spoofing the system to get around throttling, cheating somehow on throttling, etc.
• Sharing comments in this distributed newslog would be a royal pain.
  The only practical way to do it would be to cache comments between trusted hosts. It would only take one idiot to poison an area's comment list. This is likely not a viable solution for a grass-roots system.
• I'm blithely assuming there will be enough altruistic reporters (amateur or professional) supplying real news footage out of pocket to make this work.
  The official sources will likely end up mostly subscription-only for the good stuff. There will always be enough free material as a teaser to make an adequate free system, but it won't be great.
• I'm blithely assuming that setting up a server for this cache isn't a problem.
  Even if you make a drool-proof server install package, you have the problem of most ISPs taking down anyone who hosts a server with significant outgoing traffic.

IMO if a distributed system happens at all, it won't be a massive grassroots effort - it'll be a franchise scheme of some sort. Or a corporation's distributed set of news nodes, but a) that happens already and b) that doesn't save money (money is only saved when you have small enough bandwidth load per node to piggyback on residential connections with flat rates).

We'll see what actually emerges in about a decade or so.

Re:No free publishing

[Anonymous Coward]

In the old days, this was called USENET.

The Small Guy Internet Business Paradox

[Anonymous Coward]

Success == Failure

other good linux news sites

[robdeadtech]

some decent sites that are almost always updated at least once a day...

linuxinsider

linuxtoday

firstlinux

linuxsecurity

and somewhat linux related but definitely awesome...

oreilly's meerkat

oreillynet and not so much news but definitely up to date...

ONLAMP

Re:other good linux news sites

[Anonymous Coward]

desktoplinux.com
linuxdevices.com
linuxdailynews .com

Re:other good linux news sites

[mrscorpio]

www.distrowatch.com is another good Linux news site.

Chris

Re:other good linux news sites

[Anonymous Coward]

theres kill-hup, tho they do more security and general 'nix

Typical "open source" disaster

[1000101]

"But we have not succeeded in raising even a fraction of the required funds."

The closing of this site is analogous to why open source projects will always fall short of its competition (read $ not quality). There simply is not enough revenue. Until people realize there is no money in open source this trend will continue.

Re:Typical "open source" disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and news sites have what in common with open source?

Re:Typical "open source" disaster

[AmericanInKiev]

Until people realize there is an endless stream of funding in the form of tax deductions for art donated to the public OPen Source projects will run dry.

AIK

Re:Typical "open source" disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? What art donations are you talking about? If it's a joke I don't get it. Call me dense.

Re:Typical "open source" disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Common?

News about the Open Source world that nobody cares to buy a subscription too. Atleast not enough to keep the site open.

Re:Typical "open source" disaster

[1000101]

What part of ANALOGOUS do you fucking idiots not understand?? It was a web site and not an open source project? No fucking shit Sherlocks.

Re:Typical "open source" disaster

[AmericanInKiev]

The IRS allows tax deductions for non-cash donations to (the public) ie charities benefitting the public's interest.

The IRS has special rules for certain listed types of non-cash items. For example: "Works of Art" and "Collections" which includes vinyl record collections. I admit the descruiptions are a bit archaic, but the practice of law has long been interpreting the contemporary meaning of laws written years ago.

Its hardly a stretch to realize that Books and Magazines are an artform., and that Web-Magazines are still art. Even computer code is art in my opinion and could be donated for tax reimbursement.

Sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

(linux * 3)
Actually, not true. Linux is the second most installed operating system, according to IDC.

LWN - The Best Weekly Linux Kernel Commentary

[Anonymous Coward]

LWN has been arguably the best
Linux news site. Very measured,
thoughtful, informative, and
respectworthy. I have reading
their weekly front page and kernel
columns for 4 years. These people
deserve great appreciation for their
dedicated service for 4 years. They
are standout in editorial quality.

21-penguin-salute

[Space Coyote]

Oh my, all I could think of at that was the image of 21 cute little penguins being shot out of cannons. The poor things can't even fly...

Re:21-penguin-salute

[Dissenter]

Oh, but they will....

Sad but...

[ellem]

we'll be seeing a lot more of this.

Suse ROX
Red Hat RUL3Z
Mandrake BAY-BEE
MySQL is PHAT
PHP is 37337

You download the shit. Try paying for it once in a while.

Here's the Situation as I see it...

[BlackBolt]

Gnu/Linux, and all her offshoots (Linux news sites, Sourceforge, Slashdot, maybe magazines even) have always had a slim-to-none chance of survival. We're taking on the 800lb. M$ Gorilla, who has unimaginable money, power, and ferocity.

The Gnu GPL, which has good points and bad points (many more good than bad) is also a double-edged sword - one of the bad points is that most users don't pay for their stuff, so our flagship corporations can't get strong enough to defend themselves against bad economies and bad laws. We don't have the $30 Billion cushion Microsoft has to weather out the storm.

It's this easy. We're getting killed by a Catch-22 here - we don't get lots of users and developers without apps and news sites and community to support them; we can't afford these things without lots of users and developers. We need corporate sponsorship on a huge level to help knock Microsoft off their pedestal and bring equality and competition back to the market. In order to survive we need a big corporate sugar daddy. Or a group of them. That's right, IBM, Sony, Dell, Apple, Oracle, Sun, HP, Wal-Mart even. Somebody who has a stake in seeing:

a) Gnu/Linux succeed
b) Microsoft fail

and is willing (and has the balls) to put some funding into the open-source revolution. We need a year or two of Cathedral to complement our 10 years of Bazaar. I'm talking 100 programmers assigned set projects with set deadlines and set results required. A list of apps to fill the holes. A list of bugs to be fixed. A list of refinements to what we already have. IBM says they put a Billion dollars into Linux each year. Where does it go? I'm not ungrateful, I love their free tutorials and am currently lusting hard after a ThinkPad, but if they devoted some bodies to cleaning up and perfecting the foundations we already have, we could attract a lot more users. The Bazaar model works well, but most programmers don't care about the little touches that most humans care about - a good GUI, ease-of-use, simplicity. This is the stuff we need real funding on - the non-glamorous, dirty work - plus we need to get more corporate quality apps and less SourceForge quality apps. How many have been at 0.0.16 since 1998, with no updates? These projects only discourage others who want to start their own project and see that others are already "working" on it.

I think hardware manufacturers have a vested interest in stronger competition on the desktop and are probably the best suited to help, especially since Microsoft's rumored plans to release their own hardware will KILL them. If they want to stay in the computer hardware business, they had best consider funding and organizing Linux programming, because if M$ makes their own hardware, well... look how easy it is for IBM or Sony to run MAC OS X. Right - "Never Happen". And Apple's not NEARLY as bold and monopolistic and drunk on power as Microsoft. Even if the rumor doesn't pan out, Palladium being forced on hardware vendors will likely lower sales even further, and probably at a higher cost of production. And I can't see IBM and Sony enjoying being under Microsoft's thumb, doing whatever MS says, in order to keep their precious WinXP OEM licenses. A strong clean Linux with a good marketshare could kill the stranglehold Microsoft has on these guys. We need to realize what Bill Gates realized a long time ago: Marketshare is like anything else - it can be bought, if you have enough money to throw at it.

We have to get corporate support to strengthen Linux in order to prevent what happened to LWN from happening again to anyone else. The time for apathy is over.

BlackBolt

Re:Here's the Situation as I see it...

[Rebel Patriot]

When did Linux suddenly spawn this goal to eliminate Microsoft? I'm glad I wasn't around to see it. I always thought Linux was a kernel, and GNU/Linux distros were cool things geeks played with. Linux was successful before Redhat and before SuSE. It was successful and fun before Mandrake and before lwn.net. It will survive simply because it is open source. You can't kill it, so why does it need to compete with Microsoft?

You don't like MS, fine... I don't either. But please, please don't use Linux as a weapon against MS because you don't like MS. Use Linux because you like Linux.

Re:Here's the Situation as I see it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Riiiiiight

Go to Linux.com and all you see is news stories about how Linux is going to "RULE THe Desktop" and knockout Microsoft. Stop the FUD already

If B Gates wanted to he could buy all Linuxs companies and shut them down.
Thats how rich he is.

Re:Here's the Situation as I see it...

[Dionysus]

You must have missed the annual memo from ESR

Re:Here's the Situation as I see it...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the fact that he hasn't might tell you something. Maybe you are all full of shit? Nah, you'd never be able to see that. No matter how true it is.

Re:Here's the Situation as I see it...

[BlackBolt]

He hasn't because that's too overt. The DoJ would shut him down for sure then. It's got to be gradual, like the frog in the pot of water. Think about it. How can his goal be to have 100%, but leave some for the Linux guys? Get real. It's all a Chess game.

No, his plan is to get Palladium security onto every piece of hardware produced in the world. Linux, being open to massive change since the source is open, is inherently a risk. Linux won't be ALLOWED to boot, and Microsoft won't likely be giving out the documentation so we can hack Linux in.

Checkmate.

Goodbye Linux, hello Windows XP2. I hope you have your VISA ready, because you won't have a choice but to buy or go Amish.

BlackBolt

Re:Here's the Situation as I see it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped taking you seriously when you focused on the "silly dollar sign" instead of the guys point.

You're a loser.

BTW, Nice posting history, tool.

Re:Here's the Situation as I see it...

[Anonymous Coward]

the sky is falling!!!

Re:Here's the Situation as I see it...

[Anonymous Coward]

haha witty.

Re: Slashdot effect / P2P

[zwoelfk]

(slightly OT, sorry.)

speaking of the slashdot effect (on /. itself or otherwise), does anyone have any references for projects working on P2P web serving? I'm sure someone is working on this... perhaps as a browser plugin?

considering how many people view the article (thus the effect) and their caches, it's something to think about. page lifespans, upload limits, etc. would get rid of some of the big obvious issues.

A moment...

[Lac]

I am deeply saddened by this loss. I will truly miss them. LWN did something no other Linux site was doing. LWN will not be replaced any time soon. LWN... was important, perhaps the most important Linux news site.

I have been known to post over-the-top comments here because I believe that Slashdot shouldn't take itself too seriously. But I will not rant in this thread or make funny remarks. Now is not the time for wit. Now is not the time for "Funny, +5" comments. Now is not even the time for moderation.

I would like to propose a moment of silence. I know, Slashdot is just a weblog. I know, I am almost taking this forum seriously. But face it, the LWN editors have earned it and this is as good as it's gonna get. Take a minute. You can always read the funny comments tomorrow.

Re:A moment...

[Anonymous Cowrad]

I am deeply saddened by this loss.

I don't even know where to begin. You're deeply saddened? Are you serious, man? Yeah, it sure is a bitch that LWN is closing, but don't you think you're being a bit melodramatic?

Jesus christ. You need to get out more often if a website shutting down is a life-shattering event.

Re:A moment...

[RTMFD]

Hmmm... gotta love capitalism. Seriously though, it's nothing more than the natural "separation of the wheat from the chaff" which occurs during an economic downturn. If the site was amazingly inspiring and you know of a way to make money of of it, it's time to recycle their good idea into a profit-making venture (hell, O'Reilly is doing just that).

Re:A moment...

[RTMFD]

Oops....

s/of of/out of/

sorry, I'm a bit caffeine deprived :)

Re:A moment...

[salimma]

Very well put. I for one will rather miss LWN, especially the times when I need a quick, but thorough, summary of what's been going on in the past week.

Alas, well-written high-brow journalism everywhere tends to occupy a niche - even in the world of newspapers. When was the last time a broadsheet outsell a tabloid?

In silencio,

Michel

Re:A moment...

[gravious]

I would say, that losing a weekly slice of informed jounalism, relating to a number of topics that greatly interest me, is deeply saddening.

I suggest that you learn where to begin, think twice about posting and then think again.

Re: Slashdot effect / P2P

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out this Slashdot story on IBM's uServ/YouServ. It's a P2P webserver project.

LWN was...

[ehorizon]

a great site and will be missed. Fortunately we still have other great sites like linuxtoday and distrowatch.

A moment of silence... As I flush the toilet 21 times.

if you're an LWN reader, please thank them

[guybarr]

please login and say thankyouon the comments page.

give thanks where thanks is due.

Sad....

[Goonie]

Although occasionally LWN made wrong calls on things (name a news outlet that doesn't), their quality writing and analysis will be missed.

I suppose I should have supported their site with some cash, but there's only so many sites one can subscribe to with limited resources (I'm a subscriber at Salon and Crikey.com.au, amongst others).

Hopefully one day the web ad market will come back just a teency bit to help support good sites like LWN.

Give the Blender money to LWN!

[Gnulix]

Save LWN by giving them the Blender money! They're a far more valuable resource than Blender...

LWN Penguin Gallery

[superyooser]

Somebody should archive LWN's Penguin Gallery. These Tux pictures may be old hat to some of you, but I had never seen most of them. Note that there are 16 pages. Some of the pics are stupid, but others are really interesting or funny. It's neat to see how Tux himself can assume a new cultural identity as various people groups embrace him as an icon.

Some of my favorites: Indian chief Tux (page 4), Tux playing on a Lexmark "sliding board" (page 5), Beowulf cluster Tux (page 6), Argentine Cowboy Tux (page 9).

Re:LWN Penguin Gallery

[fluffbunny]

wget -r is already in the works ;)

Re:LWN Penguin Gallery

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you putting them on your web site?

LWN can stay, though.

[Inoshiro]

They are out of money for professional writers. However, why not continue in another form?

LWN was run voluntarily at first. Can it continue in this fashion? I mean, I like reading the excellent editorials, but I can also live with fewer of them. Say, the amount one person would willingly write in their spare time and contribute to the community.

Paying jobs are nice to have, I know. But LWN could continue as a hobby, like Kernel Traffic exists today. As long as you have hosting which provides bandwidth and the archives, everything can continue.

If all else fails, at least let other people mirror your archives. This way the great work LWN has contributed to the community will not go away. I only wish my financial situation were better, so I could give back some money to make up for all the times I've read LWN since 1998 (I've been reading every weeklf edition since 1999) until present and found the content to be useful.

Re:LWN can stay, though.

[leandrod]

LWN was run voluntarily at first. Can it continue in this fashion?

Totally agree. During time they added lots of coverage that are kind out of scope for me: too much recommended reading, to much items in the News section, too much proprietary software coverage, many security items that arent really essential to LWN, but are better found elsewhere. The hard thing is that perhaps other people have different itchings, so the right balance between what to include or not is very hard to achieve.

Also disclosing their plans and budget perhaps would give the community a better idea of how much to contribute.

Other ideas tossed around are doing CSS to reduce bandwidth and storage needs, doing away with the new, storage-consuming comments letters to the editors were just fine. What would really entice me is more focus on free software. While I like to read about free software deployments in businesses, I dont care about proprietary software for GNU/Linux. Others may feel similarly.

The FSF regularly toys around with the idea of a free software-only news service. I would love such a service in the LWN format.

One thing that really bothers me is that almost every voluntary effort that tries to turn commercial does so after it has grown too much to be sort-to-medium-term viable. Perhaps reverting back to the original, smaller format, going commercial, and then growing back to current format as revenues allow would do the trick. Just my 2.

Re:LWN can stay, though.

[kill-hup]

They did mention talking about releasing content tarballs, so I imagine LWN mirrors will start popping up soon afterward.

I agree that they should remain active in some scaled-back form. Perhaps no more (or not as many) paid authors or less original content. There are many sites out there that exist primarily in "hobby" form (mine included), and I think the community in general would be happier to see them linger than disappear altogether.

This year just gets worse and worse!

[Eric Smith]

I certainly hope 2003 is better, because 2002 has been the worst year out of the nearly 40 I've seen. Hardly a week has gone by without some bad news like this.

Anyhow, I'm very sorry to see LWN go. They provided a great resource, and I was glad to donated money to them. It's too bad the donations weren't sufficient, but I guess it's not surprising.

Sigh.

speaking of tip jars...

[e-gold]

I keep telling slashdot (and the readers here) about the possibilities of tipjars, and trying to get them to think outside the box WRT currencies, so far with 0 effect. I've been around for a while (user 36755) and so has e-gold. I've had ideas about things like selling mod points (the most-evil of my ideas) and talked endlessly here about tipjars for musicians to solve the "Napster problem," all with little or no effect.

I'm not going away, or giving up, or even surprised or complaining (well, all that much) but it's odd that they and other companies don't embrace the opportunity I bring to cut out the financial middleman (ok, at least make multiple middlemen compete, if you call e-gold a middleman instead of just a currency based on grams of gold). While I doubt /. will go down the tubes anytime soon, I do think they've missed an opportunity (but I'm biased as hell). Maybe someday, someone will do for slashdot what www.bananagold.com did for Amazon, and permanently shut me up. :)
JMR

Speaking only for myself, as always.

We could help saving LWN

[jsse]

by posting more news of them.

"LWN.net closing down"
"More on LWN.net closing down"
"LWN.net closing down - count down"
"LWN.net 3 days before closing down"
"LWN.net closing down" (/. editor repeat the last week's news)
"Will LWN.net closing down tomorrow?"

The hits gained from /. effect along could help pulling them out of misery.

That was me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just too lazy to change the default "AC" on the submissions page. I don't care who knows who I am... especially about this.

I register a nick, then forget the password and change ISPs... I think I was MrFubuki, then MrBaka... now I'm just AC.

I didn't think they'd pick that story up, especially with the obvious slam on /. ///POV (www.standardalternative.net/~mike)

Insightful my ass...

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't an Open Source project. It was a web publication. The writers weren't getting paid due to lack of revenue from ads. They tried donations. That helped a little but failed to produce enough revenue. Most other web sites which are funded through ads have the same problem.

It looks like slashdot still gets a crapload of money from ad banners but that is the exception and not the rule. Slashdot's parent company isn't doing so well in any case.

So would you consider slashdot an "Open Source Project"? It would seem closer since slash is open source but it still makes money, is owned by a corporation, and has paid employees.

BitTorrent for web pages

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot needs a BitTorrent for web pages :)

Do not use 'that' for the adverb 'so'

[Anonymous Coward]

WRONG: but have THAT many people really signed up

CORRECT: but have SO many people really signed up

It sounds so much better.

Internet != Web

[rtscts]

How hard would it be to just send this info out on a readonly mailing list? There's plenty of mailing list servers around if you don't want to run your own email server. If all else fails, spammers seem to be able to send millions of huge ads for a couple of bucks, I don't think a weekly ASCII newsletter to willing subscribers is going to hurt anyone.

Or are you just un-1337 if you don't have a website?

Re:Internet != Web

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about?

They aren't quitting because they won't have a website. They are quitting because they are doing this as a living and they aren't making enough to live. Sure they could do it for free but who are we to demand that from them?

Re:Internet != Web

[Anonymous Coward]

Soooo I can code for free but people that right about it have to get paid?

LOL

Re:Internet != Web

[Anonymous Coward]

You demand it of everyone else! For gods sake the hypocrisy in here is choking me to death!

Get together

[raarts]

I would be happy to pay for a LWN subscription, but I don't. Why? Because I'm afraid I'll eventually pay a similar amount for every online publication I want to read and that would stack up too much for me.
But basically I wouldn't mind paying for the fact I'm an Open Source fan.

My solution: Get together with similar publications (Linuxtoday? Slashdot? Freshmeat? rpmfind? MozillaZine? Apache Week?) Charge a fee as a group. Create a free, outdated (four weeks) version of the sites to show what you're offering. Don't get overboard on the rates. Create student rates. Make it very easy to sign up, and easy for us non-US citizens to transfer the money.

I would personally pay $15 a month for a combined subscription. My company would pay more.

Re:Get together

[SomeOtherGuy]

I agree. I am not against suprisptions per say. But if I had to do for every worthwhile site on the internet (which in most cases are just links to other sites) -- the amount I would have to pay is unthinkable. Kind of like if you take a penny and double it every day for 30 days -- you will be in the millions. Online subscriptions would be like a bad chain letter. Pay $5 to siteA. SiteA-Story1 links me to SiteB who requires I pay another $5 bucks --- on and on and on. As much as I like /. it is no secret that most of the "content" they provide is harvested via links to the actual content site.

Perhaps the poster ment Joe Barr

[Anonymous Coward]

Xref: www.linuxworld.com linuxworld.forums.articles.1999-06-vcontrol_4:3

From: Joe Barr [joe@pjprimer.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 1999 8:02 AM
To: sales@mindcraft.com
Subject: Industry Scum

Hey, Mindcraft

I am writing an article about asslicking whores in the industry.

You know the sort, they bend over for folks like Bill Gates by
producing totally false "benchmarks" based on liess, mistests,
biased hardware and software, and scores of other unethical,
deceiptful, dishonest, duplicitous means.

Like your reviews of NT vs Novell and Linux. Classic cases of
professional prostitution.

Cock sucking the geeks in Redmond.

The question for you maggots, whores, whatever you prefer to be
called, is: how much does it cost to buy one of your benchmarks?

tHANKS,

Joe Barr The Dweebspeak Primer

Re: Slashdot effect / P2P

[jit]

The Globe-project (http://www.cs.vu.nl/globe) from Tanenbaum has some application (called GlobeDoc) that attempts to replicate websites over various servers based on the use of the site. Dunno if it's handy for anything as dynamic as a newssite though.

#include Currently using the projects various parts for my masters-project.

Ways to make tons of $$$ to aid Slashdot / LWN !

[Taco Cowboy]

Things don't look good for entities like Slashdot and / or LWN (and others).

So, to help out, we must make tons of moolah.

Way to do it ?

Imitate what Global Crossing did ... squandered tons and tons of $$$ and then go to WhiteHouse and tell Bush and Co. to bailout the company for the sake of "National Security".

Or we can learn a chapter or two from the Enron / WorldCom / ImClone / Xerox folks - COOK THE DAMN BOOKS !

Slashdot and LWN sure can use some of the "excess" from the "book-cooking extravaganzas" and all the other slashdotters / lwnners will definitely looouuurrrrvvvveees you to death.

I see DEAD OSs

[Anonymous Coward]

Everywhere I look, I see death! *BSD is dying, Linux is dying, BeOS faces death, Apple is dying, website x dies, Loki games faces death, free StarOffice dies... Microshit has won! I admit it now.

Stop giving NYT Dap

[teatime]

Stop giving NYT Dap if you feel that they are attacking the things you care about.

Do not direct traffic or people towardds them any longer if they show utter disregard for your culture and concepts.

Do you need them or do they need you?

they probably ran this article just to run their advertisements for you market...

Hey, some perspective please !

[guybarr]

2002 has been the worst year out of the nearly 40 I've seen

I'm (was) a permanent reader of LWN and will sorely miss them (I also donated when I could), but come on, in the last 40 years there had been wars, famine and disease that killed and maimed hundreds of millions of people worldwide ; some of these events I find a bit worse then closing of my favourite magazine .

2002 wasn't very bright so far, but it also wasn't the gloomiest.

Re:Hey, some perspective please !

[Eric Smith]

If the closing of LWN was the worst thing that had happened to me so far this year, I'd certainly agree with you. But in addition to a few major things that have gone wrong this year, a whole lot of smaller things have. So this is one more contribution to the general suckiness of the year.

in the last 40 years there had been wars, famine and disease that killed and maimed hundreds of millions of people worldwide ;

It's not that I don't sympathize with the people who were affected by such things, but I was talking about how the year has been for people I associate with. I can only carry "think globally" so far; when things are terrible locally it what's the point in worrying about other people you don't know who have it worse? Sure, any year that you get maimed or killed is obviously seriously f$#@ed up, but so far that hasn't happened to me. On the other hand, several family members and friends have died this year.

2002 wasn't very bright so far, but it also wasn't the gloomiest.

Well, I'm glad it's not for you, but it is for me and several of my friends, which is why I said that.

I'm trying to stay optimistic about things looking up in the future, but denying that things are terrible now won't particularly help.

Oh dear

[streetlawyer]

Larry Augustin done nothing but sell stock from day one my friends

Obviously Not.

[ONOIML8]

"It's been a good four year run for them."

Duuuuuh....obviously not too good. A good run would have enabled them to pay their bills and be in a position to keep going.

heh funny

[Anonymous Coward]

"... unlike certain other well known Linux news sites. ..."

slashdot?

Re:heh funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Definately. Slash(as in slash and burn)dot is the worst example of "journalism" and "internet community" in existance. And yet it thrives and will live on forever while real journalistic sites go under due to lack of interest. Sickening.

There's people in that site too!

[zopepaul]

I'm pleased to see all the positive comments about LWN. It's also been my favorite Linux site, going back to 1998. In fact, LWN broke the news about Zope going open source, one hour after I announced it at a Python conference. We weren't ready for the exposure they provided, so we had to haul *ss to catch up. :^)

What isn't discussed here is the personal side. I think Liz, Jon, and Dennis are some of the most honorable, decent people in the world of Linux. They've all given a lot to the community, even beyond LWN.

Lots of others shoved wads of cash in their pockets when the bubble inflated. LWN held out until an offer with integrity showed up. Alas, it turned out to be a moral but non-lucrative choice.

To Liz and Jon and Dennis: kudos for being Good People. You've already created a warm legacy, something not enough people in the community can claim.

What was that?

[Lethyos]

They have always demonstrated sanity, restraint and professionalism along with thoughtful commentary - unlike certain other well known Linux news sites.

You mean like this one?

Its all my fault

[Biolo]

It's my fault, yesterday wasn't going well.

Broke my working code, couldn't fix it again

Had a crash in my car on the way home

My expensive DVD player (out of warranty of course) let out the magic smoke

LWN announced it was shutting down

Seriously though, they will definitely be badly missed. They were part of my daily net routine. Interestingly a number of users on the LWN comments page have made substantial donations just after the news broke (several US$200 donations were mentioned). Perhaps its time we stopped griping and just put our money where our collective mouthes are. I'm going to donate tonight after I get home, and I challenge every other reader who can afford it to do likewise.

regurgitators

[mattdm]

Most (if not all) of those sites are just spitting up links to Linux news and articles elsewhere on the web. LWN has actual solid quality journalism, and they'll be hard to replace -- I don't think any of the sites you've listed fit the bill, even though they might be good in and of themselves.

Why LWN was unique

[vondo]

The best thing about LWN from my perspective was that they would actually take some time to analyze the news themselves. It's easy to put together a site that is just a collection of news stories. It takes a lot more effort to try to explain to your readers what the news means. For instance, their kernel coverage was fantastic for someone like me who doesn't really understand the kernel at more than a superficial level.

Second, LWN was unabashedly pro-Linux, not anti-commercial-software. They really took more of an OSI like attitude: Open-source is great, here's why, but we realize and accept that some companies won't do it, and they make useful software too.

Finally, LWN rarely required you to visit another page on their site to get to the article they were linking too. Linuxtoday does this and it annoys me to no end. On the front page LT quotes the first paragraph of the story, on the next page the first 3 paragraphs. Only from there can you go to the actual article.

the dot...

[Anonymous Coward]

the dot bomb bamb boom crash tingle tackle rickle boom chicka bam boom pow.

Wah!

[return 42]

Geez, that sucks. They are indeed the best Linux news site.

(Don't waste bandwidth with the obvious question, "So why didn't you donate?". I'm too broke.)

Has anyone verified this?

[Orp]

LWN's site says nothing of their next issue being their last (that I can find anyway), and there is no link posted in this story. Has anyone actually verified that this is true?

Re:Has anyone verified this?

[Orp]

Errr... never mind, I must be blind.

Subscription Organization

[JavaLunatic]

What the internet needs is non-profit organization(s) that handles subscription to websites, sort of like cable companys do. The current model, similar to magazine subscription will never work, as most people see little value in it.

Uhrm ?

[RinkSpringer]

It's been a good four year run for them.

Well, seeing they have to end their run, I don't think the above statement is entirely true...

If only it was LinuxGram...

[kevcol]

...that was closing down instead.

What content?

[Simon Carr]

/. is a news relay with user comments. And anyway, how can this model not be fesable? You have a co-lo in the USA (dirt cheap), you have some boxes load balanced with something inexpensive, and you have bandwidth.

Human costs aside, running Slashdot probably costs a fraction of what even running your local corner store costs. I honestly don't know where and how these sites that only serve up HTML and a few images lose money.

Maybe I'm ignorant, and I don't think I am, but bandwidth charges aside none of these sites should be losing money if they have a steady flow of advertising deals. And the deals don't have to be big.

Let's say you've got a one man operation...
If you had 80 customers willing to pay you $80 a month just to be in the ad rotation (forget this CPM crap, it's more confounding to predict than 95th percentile) that's $6500 a month in revenue.

Pulling numbers out of my arse;
You've got a half-cab that'll cost you $600 USD, you've got bandwith that will cost you let's say $1200 USD for a 3Mbit contract (if you've got a good supplier? I don't know, I'm in Canada and we tend to pay a little more for bandwidth). And that's if you have low numbers. 80 ads isn't that many ads in rotation really, you're sort of dogging it if you have a high traffic site and only 80 people come forward to pay for monthly ads cheap.

So now you've got 4400USD left over. Some goes to taxes, and the rest can go into your pocket.

Am I saying a one man operation could run a Linux news site? Sure, why not? You contract out for articles, you admin it yourself etc..

Hell, maybe I'll try it, I just sold myself. Ok that went way longer than I thought it would, I'm going back to work.

Re:What content?

[Surak]

Pulling numbers out of my arse;

Why yes you are ... :)

USD$1200 will NOT get you anything CLOSE to to 3MB connection, and I'm sure /. has more than just a 3M contract...

Re:What content?

[Stephen Samuel]

USD$1200 will NOT get you anything CLOSE to to 3MB connection, and I'm sure /. has more than just a 3M contract...

OK: so maybe they should put their colo into Canada. I think that I could easily find an unmetered 3Mb connection for $1200US/mo in Canada -- probably more in the region of 10~100Mb.

Re:What content?

[noweb4u]

nonsense. alot of colo providers offer bandwidth cheap because you don't have to pay for the local loop, and they buy bandwidth "in bulk".
If you get 3mb committed, burstable to 10, billed at 95th percentile, you can usually get halfway decent prices in a colo center.

Questions to ask ourselves.

[Sri Ramkrishna]

I for one would like to ask why the single most popular, informative linux news site failed? What does that speak of the market for real Linux Journalism? Will we be forever forced to read weblog news or listen to the whines of other journalists who just don't get it?

LWN filled a niche for me that nobody else could do. It was one of those sites where you got up in the morning and grab a mug of coffee and start reading!

If anything we shouldn't allow LWN to close. We should be running a campaign to save lwn.

I donated $50, link

[Odinson]

You should too if you enjoy LWN clarity, speed and accuracy.

LWN Contribution page

Matthew Newhall
President of LILUG.
Long Island Linux Users Group.

Fuck

[extrasolar]

This is not fair.

Hell, close down slashdot before LWN. This site is pitiful in comparison.

Even during the most furious times, LWN has always been mature.

What the hell. What the hell.

Yet, on the LWN comments page, it looks the money is rolling in.

Maybe they will get their miracle. Wish I could help too--no money.

Thank you LWN. May the source be with you.

Always.

be american, pay for content, software, whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

People ought to know, they should learn to PAY for things or all the efforts will be in vain. Open source is way for univesity student not for business that feeds the family. So stop to propagate them and the world would be a happier place.

money problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure it's hard to get contributions from geeks who are busy scouring garbage bins for cans. Geeks don't have money anymore. Give it up. It's over--go back to being salespeople.

Money and mouth...

[nanun]

...and the even bigger shame is that some people will moan about how valuable content will be lost and not make the smallest effort or contribution toward preserving that information.

It's not a "...sad thing about the Internet..." situation, IMO. W/O the Internet, you might have never even had the opportunity to access that information. Sort of the, "better to have loved and lost..." kind of proposition.

Consider museums and art collections. Folks will donate to museums to preserve artifacts. Why doesn't anyone contribute to websites that preserve and show information?

Acronym Sanity Was Re:No free publishing

[MrSnivvel]

Can there be some kind of general rule, that an acronym can be no longer than 5 characters.

TANSTAAFL

What the hell does that mean? Next we'll be seeing:

RCPAHOHSCALASS

Robert's Cat Puked A Hairball On His Shag Carpet And Left A Stinky Stain

Re:Acronym Sanity Was Re:No free publishing

[Sloppy]

Sorry, but regardless of its length, that one is famous and well-known, especially among nerds. If you're curious about it, you'll find the research to be effortless.

stupidest moderation award!

[Anonymous Coward]

a winner! (and THIS, my boy, is offtopic). The idea of ways to make money was NOT...