Linux Today Founder Calls for Boycott of Linux Today

dave writes "I founded and managed Linux Today in 1998, bringing it up from nothing into the most powerful and large Linux news website in the world, in less than a year. I am now calling on the Linux community to boycott my creation until its current owners stop accepting money from Microsoft to publish blatantly anti-Linux/pro-Microsoft ads."

Comments

The problem is

[dtfinch]

Slashdot has the same exact anti-Linux, pro-Microsoft ads. I've tried bringing this up, but was rejected.

Imagine if it read like this:
"I'm now calling on the Linux community to boycott Slashdot until its current owners stop accepting money from Microsoft to publish blatantly anti-Linux/pro-Microsoft ads."

I personally would call upon the community to click every Microsoft ad they see. They get cheap advertising if nobody clicks on them. And they're not going away if you don't. Microsoft is definitely the high bidder on most of our sites.

Re:Ads on Slashdot

[t--f-c]

agreed, I've been noticing the "informative" ads on here recently regarding TCO of MS vs Linux and all sorts of other make me gag FUD, but I was wondering just how much control the people selling the ad-space (i.e. Linux Today and /.) have in the content, vs the ad buyers who can possibly dictate which websites they get served on... I have no experience in this arena, but I imagine it isn't a terribly far stretched idea to see a request of ads on certain websites from ad time buyers..

The truth will out!

[timothy]

OK, I work for Slashdot, but am not writing in any official capacity :)

- Slashdot takes advertising.

- Some of the advertising Slashdot takes is from Microsoft.

- Microsoft advertising is paid for in U.S. dollars.

- The editorial side neither sells the ads nor chooses the advertisers; whether the ad at the top is for Microsoft, Red Hat, or The Estate of Jonas Savimbi, I'm just as surprised as anyone else by the particular banner that appears.

Above is just to point out that the ad-choice decision is not one I make ;)

However (But! Nevertheless!), I don't think it's all that important anyhow. So long as ads are respectful of your browser (I hate Flash ads, and it goes without saying that no one is friends with popup ads or other eye-pokers), their content doesn't concern me a whole lot. (Could there be exceptions? Yes. But the MS ads I've seen on Slashdot, for example, have been tame as a churchmouse. Most of them don't even rise to the level of puffery, more straight 'product exists' notification.)

Ads for Microsoft Visual Studio appear on Slashdot; a lot of readers use that or similar products in their work. Ignoring the possibility that readers use source-secret software would be dumb on the part of the advertisers; they would be ignoring a rationally valuable resource. I'd prefer that people use more free, Free software --and they will. But I'm confident enough that people will choose open source stuff on their own for their own reasons that I don't think advertisements for The Other Kind are a huge concern. What would it say if they were? (Solar and wind power is great; there are still ads for gasoline generators in the back of Mother Earth News.)

I like seeing IBM and other companies push their open-source agendas (parallel and connected to their other agendas) in ads and other forums, but here, too, I don't think advertisements matter except as an input; people will still make up their own minds based on multiple, sometimes ineffable factors.

As at least one other poster has commented, wouldn't you rather the money flowed this direction than the other?

timothy