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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."
I was shocked to find the very same ads mentioned in the article on this site a while back. I've always thought of
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do they pick the ads or are they through a service? i am not sure if it makes it any better.... but for example if you get ads from google and are a tech related site i am sure you will be hit with M$ ads as well as whatever else.
I read nothing in the complaint to suggest that Linux Today's content has been compromised by these adverts. Instead, the entire complaint seems to be purely that Microsoft advertises, and the advertising itself is Linux-hostile.
That's fine. And I expect most readers will ignore what Microsoft has to say, but be delighted they're funding Linux.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
But what about those who are just venturing into the Linux world and are just getting thier feet wet. There are a lot of those and they don't understand it all yet.
Evolution or ID?
Perhaps this speaks more to the founder's views of Linux Today readers than anything else. I would think tuxors would be thrilled to be siphoning some funds from MS in this manner...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Agreed. I think it's great that Microsoft likes to support pro-Linux magazines and web sites. Everytime I see one I chuckle to myself. "Suckers. No one here is going to be swayed by your ad, but thanks for spending the money anyway!" If anything, Microsoft's need to advertise in Linux channels helps legitimize Linux (as though that hasn't already been done.)
Well a point brought up was the fact that if you read a good article on there and you pointed your PHB to it he would see the Microsoft add and think twice about it. That is the scary issue.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Way back in the 90s, my brother banded together a bunch of his friends to start a company and put up a web site. It eventually became one of the leaders in it's field with millions of hits per day (it's a sports site that is now run by one of the big television networks). My brother's a big proponent of open source, he's got an ultra-low Slashdot ID (less than 100), the web sites he's built have all been done under Linux and Perl, and has contributed to various open source projects pretty extensively (eg, xemacs, mysql). When the web site was just big enough to attract advertising, they made a $2000 booking from Microsoft, and I admonished him for doing business with the devil. He replied, "yeah, but the money's flowing in the right direction."
Who among us wouldn't rather money flow from Microsoft rather than to them, especially when the recipient is an open-source advocate?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
When Linux Magazine started running ads from Microsoft in their print magazine, some people were outraged. The editors said that they would continue to run the ads, but intended to refuse any ads that were negative towards Linux in any way. I feel the compromise is acceptable, but of course, not everyone sees it that way. If this policy ever changes, however, I'll simply stop reading and puchasing the magazine.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
When that happens, the advertising will be reaching the likes of those who are not zealots and will be susceptible from advertising from a competitor. If Microsoft is able to make its case against Linux in those ads, those are potential converts that will be adversely swayed in their decision.
Two sides to this coin - the trick is determining which side has more weight.
King o' the Nanters
To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if this "boycott" is breaking an agreement between the founder and the buyers, much less a handful of laws out there to protect buyers from a sell-and-smash job.
Should I worry that there's a "Anti-Microsoft bias" since there was no linuxtoday link in the story?
:)
Not that I care, but Linuxtoday hasn't been slashdotted yet.
Funny it worked with the death of os/2.
MS funded ziff davis magazines and they wanted to applease MS so they ran negative stories on os/2 and positive ones from Microsoft to keep money rolling in.
http://saveie6.com/
I'm calling bullshit here. This guy sells his site to someone else to generate a profit. He then proceeds to bitch and moans when the current owners sell add space, also for a profit, and an add apears that the he doesn't agree with. It's complete and total bullshit.
If he really cared about that site he wouldn't have sold it. Instead, he sells out to some corporate whore and then has the audicity to bitch and moan when said corporate whore, acting as all corporate whores do, sells out by selling add space to some other corporate whore who spreads FUD. Newsflash buddy, you sold out just the same as the current owners are selling out.
I have no problem with people who start something and then sell it. It's called capitalism baby, but don't bitch and moan when whoever buys it does something you don't like. You sold the thing, if it was that important you shouldn't have sold it, but you did, so shut up and move on.
Flame me all you want, but things like this tick me off. Oh and don't give me this "but the spirit of the site is being violated" crap. If he cared so much about the spirit of the site, as I've said over and over again, he wouldn't have sold it.
So we have made a religion of our O/S and become cultists who must shield our new recruits like children from any subversive outside influences. Welcome to Linux as the new Scientology.
Pro microsoft doesn't mean anti-linux. It just means ant-everythingelse. Same with being pro-linux... you're anti-everything_that_isn't_linux.
Taking a resource away from someone only matters if they have a finite amount of it.
So, for instance, if you at war in a desert, doing something to make a water supply unusable to the enemy would be a tactically sound move. However, if you were at war in the Canadian praries destroying some wheat really isn't going to hurt the opposing force. There is a lot of wheat up here.
Microsoft has over 53 Billion dollars in cash and short term assets. Thats Billion with a B. Taking a couple hundred, or even thousand dollars from them in terms of advertising will in no way effect Microsoft in the short or long term. Every linux site out there could show nothing but ads from Microsoft untill the cows come home, and Microsoft would still not be adversly affected by the cash flow.
paul reinheimer
Has anyone online ever called a "boycott" that actually turned out successfully?
Calling a boycott is the new fallback insult of today. "Well, I'll just call a boycott--take that!"
Apparently we're boycotting the RIAA, the MPAA, software patents, Microsoft, and more.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Don't you realize that this is all part of MICROSOFT'S BIG PLAN?
What'd Steve Ballmer say like last freaking month?
"It's my goal that you can't go anywhere on the internet without seeing a Microsoft logo."
Slashdot.org: Check.
Linux Today: Check.
Way to go team.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
After sitting here and reperatedly hitting refresh (over 200 times), I have yet to see any MS ads on LT. Ive seen ads for everything else - Bellsouth, Rackspace, Netzero, Symantec - but not Microsoft. Show me these ads, I say, /then/ you can rant.
He doesn't like the ads and he would have rejected them. But he couldn't because he was not in the position any more.
There are sound reasons for every publisher to discard ads: too cheap, too offending, too late.
But if a competitor buys ad-space from you it always means that you are doing alright. Otherwise the competitor wouldn't mind spending money. Ads mean that a competitor takes you serious. And he's funding you without obligations.
I see lots of ads in Linux/Unix affine publications with Microsoft advertisments. I don't oppose that. If Microsoft PR thinks they want to spend money to have printed ads, pop-ups, banners or other (strictly seperated) forms of advertisment in a Linux magazine, it's pefectly OK as long as ads and editorial content doesn't get mixed.
Or does the submitter suggest that editorial content and advertisements are no longer strictly separated in this case? That would be a grave accusation indeed. And if he wants to raise only the slightest suspicion that is the case then he has to come up with citations, examples, precedences to prove his point.
Yeah. If you want to stay free of adverse ads, then just don't let ads into your site in the first place. Personally, I believe that the best approach to A Better Internet (TM) is not running ads at all. This is in the original spirit of the Internet as a information highway. The cost of running an Internet site these days are peanuts anyway, so why the heck take money for ads from somebody whose views you don't want to endorse?
I used to be a sceptic. These days, I'm not so certain.
"If the devil pays let him stay." :)
When's the last time you actually looked at an advertisement? My mind doesn't even notice them anymore, be they in magazines or online, much like the pink mountain in HHGTtG.
Hey wouldn't it be funny if /. or Linux Today posted the Microsoft ads, but allowed comments on them?
I once considered making a website that was just banner ads with comments on the banners. But a) bannerfarm.com was already taken, and b) I didn't think I could draw enough visitors to get enough comments to make it interesting. But I still like the idea.
I'm not dumping on you or the moral elite Phil,
We live in a free country. You can be as stuffy as you want to be. You can even get a gun and move to the hills if you have the resources and inclination to do so. That's the beauty of it really.
But when you run a web site, especially a community supported one that does not produce that does not produce a tangible product that can be sold, resold, or otherwise generate recurrent revenue, there are certain financial and mathematical realities that come into play.
When you're talking about money, real tangible money that you earn by providing valuable ad space on your tangible web sites to tangible sponsors, you are receiving something you find valuable in exchange for that space, which otherwise would not generate any revenue.
That is the key. If you do a cost benefit analysis on a site like this based on real world factors and common sense taken into account; you will find that the time spent developing and maintaining such a site is directly proportional to success and usefulness the site. No one, is going to run a web site like this or Linux Today full time, if it doesn't make financial sense to do so. We all need to make a living, unless of course we're too good to work.
Sure, it would be nice if people who had the resources chose to do a neat little out of the kindness of their hearts, and some do, I'm not knocking that either. So you can reign in that high horse a little.
Ideally, you want to refrain from offending your user base through pop up ads or spam, which aren't very useful to begin with considering that most of us block that anyway. So what does that leave you with?
Banner ads. Lots and lots of neat little banner ads, and those odd shaped rich media ads.
Now Microsoft may be a convicted felon. I'll concede that.
You may be interested to know that convicted felons are everywhere. There are literally millions of them. They usually work lower paying jobs or start businesses for themselves. Many of them live perfectly honest life styles after paying their debt to society. That's how it works.
There's no ethical way around that, nor should there be. And there's nothing ethically wrong or illegal about dealing with said person or entity if you choose to do so. And if they're not posting anything illegal, profane, or obscene on your web site, there really shouldn't be any ethical problem at all.
You need to lump Google and Microsoft together, because they are both asking you to do the very same thing in this case. They are asking for that tangible ad space that you need to make money with. It's that same space that they would like to use to sell their product on. It's not your fault that Microsoft's marketing department has a sense of irony, and can afford to throw money out the window on advertising that is not properly targeted at a useful client base.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Don't you guys see the elegance in having Billy Bob and his Micro$haft fund the spread of Linux? This is almost perpetual motion, or reverse energy consumption.
Any press is good press. Linux awareness, coupled with mature product, is all Linux needs. We have the awareness, and the attractive price point is driving business to assist with the product.
The next generation interface will win the day, not the best OS, server, or application.