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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.
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!!!
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
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
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.
/. 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. :)
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
JMR
Speaking only for myself, as always.
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
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...
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!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Larry Augustin done nothing but sell stock from day one my friends
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