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LinuxWorld Senior Editorial Staff Resigns
sachmet writes "In light of the interview with Fuat Kirccali, James Turner has announced on his blog the immediate resignation of the LinuxWorld senior editorial staff." From the post: "We regret that Sys-Con Media has
been unable to apply a standard of journalistic ethics that we can comfortably operate
under. We feel that recent articles published with the consent of Sys-Con Media fail to
meet minimum generally accepted journalistic codes, and because the management of
Sys-Con Media has failed to acknowledge that the articles are by all informed judgment
ethically unsupportable, we have decided we must find other avenues for our work."
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Senior Editorial Staff of LinuxWorld Magazine Announce
Resignations
MONTVALE, New Jersey, May 14th, 2005 --- The entire senior editorial staff of
LinuxWorld Magazine has today announced that they will be leaving the magazine,
effective immediately.
The following statement was released by the group. "We regret that Sys-Con Media has
been unable to apply a standard of journalistic ethics that we can comfortably operate
under. We feel that recent articles published with the consent of Sys-Con Media fail to
meet minimum generally accepted journalistic codes, and because the management of
Sys-Con Media has failed to acknowledge that the articles are by all informed judgment
ethically unsupportable, we have decided we must find other avenues for our work."
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
James Turner
turner@blackbear.com
603-552-2020
Dee-Ann LeBlanc
dee@renaissoft.com
(604) 898-8433
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Long story short, well known anti-FOSS journalist posted article that was seriously devoid of journalistic ethics as well as attacking the maitainer of the Groklaw blog.
Editorial staff demanded article be withdrawn by the publishers other wise they would walk. Article was pulled as well as all other articles by original author.
Head of publishing company gives interview basically saying the only reason he pulled the articles was due to a threat of a DoS attack. Otherwise he sounds very much like he supports original author in her attack on Groklaws maintainer.
Senior Editors get pissed at latest example of publisher not getting concepts such as ethics or integrity and decide to show him what they mean.
http://dee.linuxworld.com/read/1278292.htm
It is with some sadness that I've had to resign from LinuxWorld Magazine. Over the past nearly two years I've worked with a group of people with whom I've developed a great rapport and friendship. We were unpaid editors but we devoted a lot of time and energy to it nonetheless. It was a great experience for me and I look forward to other opportunities as they arise.
I may edit this post in the future and add more details.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
This is all because of the bitter battle between Maureen O'Gara of LinuxWorld and PJ of Groklaw, which recentley culminated is MOG publishing very personal details about PJ. MOG was fired and it looks like the rest have jumped in protest that the article was published in the first place.
Dee-Ann Blanc has posted.
This letter has already been emailed to the people involved:
Dear Fuat and SYS-CON,
I am writing this letter to tender my resignation. I have worked hard on LinuxWorld Magazine since its inception, and really don't want to walk away from it as it continues to build up a good head of steam, but given recent events I just cannot continue to be associated with SYS-CON. The complete (and public) lack of understanding of why O'Gara's maelstrom article was wrong, among other things, suggests to me that my sense of ethics is simply too divergent from SYS-CONs and there will be further heated clashes in the future.
It goes on a bit, and of course the entry before it was interesting too. One thing - despite Turners announcement that the entire senior staff was going, it appears that he may have stepped out on a limb, as several of the other editors have not, at this time, announced their resignation. Just Turner and Blanc, so far. I'm hoping to see Walker, Winslow, and Taylor follow suit soon.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
This is the offending article: Exclusive: Who Is 'PJ' Pamela Jones of Groklaw.Net? [Google Cache]
Everything in the article is entirely irrelevant. The article appears to be a good example of the hostility women aim at each other when they are jealous. Pamela Jones of GrokLaw is a far more well-known writer than Maureen O'Gara.
Certainly the article should not have been published.
I don't know if others already noticed this, but I only just now figured it out. The link to the blog entry came up as a blank page to me. When I tried to view the source, there actually was none: the web server had sent no data. At first I just blew it off as a network gliltch and went to reading peoples comments. But then I wondered "what if I change my user agent string?" I told Konqueror to identify itself as MSIE 6.0 and - hey presto - the page loaded!
A website called "linuxworld.com" is coded to refuse to serve pages to a Linux specific web browser. If anyone needs yet another reason to ignore linuxworld, there it is.
Talking of who is endorsing who, here are the people to complain to and/or boycott. This is to save you from having to go to the sys-con site yourself. More will be added as I (or you) find them.
First letter capitalised for easy sorting. Alphabetical order. Product advertised where mentioned. No links to avoid giving further adverts.
Please be polite and clear when contacting, not angry. Please only do so where you have a real existing or potential business relationship with the company which you are able to cut off or otherwise influence. Please remember that these companies may have already cut off contacts with sys-con and simply their adverts have not yet been removed.
Arkeia / Enterprise Backup Software
Barracuda Networks / Spam Firewalls
Chrystal reports (XI)
Embedded Systems / PDA Sync Software
Forum Systems / XML security of some kind
Fusion Ware / Integration Server
Google (ads by google)
IT program management / office best practices
Infitech / X5 NAS
Jboss (JEEE application server)
Microsoft
Netop remote control
Networld Interop / conference
Oracle
Oracle technology network
Parasoft automated software error prevention(tm)
Quadbase
Qualcomm / Qcamera (SymbianDJ)
Quest software / Jprobe suite
Sleepycat software / Berkley DB Java Edition
Sun / Java Studio Creator
Sybase
Tenable / Network Security
TruePosition / Location based services
Wily technology
XSL Maker / XSL IDE
Linus Torvalds basically trademarked the name "Linux" as a way to keep others from doing it instead. This way Linus can control what and how the name "Linux" is used, and more importantly, make sure that some legal idiot doesn't get ahold of the trademark and hold the entire F/OSS community hostage (like SCO) because they got to the USPTO first with the trademark registration.
Linus has publicly stated that he doesn't mind the community use of the term. Magazines and journals (both dead-tree and on-line) using the name Linux were around even before the trademark was formally registered, and this use of the term is generally acceptable. Just don't speak for the Linux development community unless you really are a major contributor to the kernel and what you are saying is generally acceptable by the community (like, sure, we use the GPL for our software, etc.).
If you were to start a business that had the name Linux in it, or used Linux beyond a passing reference (such as creating a new distro that has the name Linux somewhere in the distro's name), it would be a good idea to track down Linus' e-mail address and drop him a line asking him for permission to use the name Linux, even if it is only a matter of courtesy. He'll probably grant it as well, especially if you are nice about it. Linus is not a big company that is jealously guarding its trademarks.
Well, slightly inaccurate in facts (he didn't trade mark it, he had an existing fraudulent registration transferred to him) and more inaccurate in tone. Linus has said that you can use it for writing about Linux. He hasn't said that hate publications are okay (and that's what publishing people's home addresses in this way amounts to). More importantly, even if he thinks he had mistakenly said they are okay, he can also withdraw that permission since he has no contractual obligation to these magazines. This is a simple practical situation where he can make a clear decision.
Avoiding the issue and just ignoring this would be his choice and that choice would speak clearly about him.
Please don't call that an experimenet.
Milgram's test stands as a low point in the application of Psychology, but a high point in the sensationalisim of its findings.
There is not control, so there is no provability. The population was self selecting. There were problems in reproducibility, lending only labs that were able to reproduce to be published. And today, the experiment is now considered unethical preventing the acceptance of any further research on the findings.
It's about as close to an experiment in scientific terms as O'Gara's recent piece was an "article" in publishing terms.
Actually Linus didn't actually trademark the name. It was given to him in a settlement with someone who trademarked it and tried to hold the entire community hostage back in 1997.
SCO wasn't the first company to make money at the expense of the Linux community.
Microsoft has For a while now, Microsoft has been taking out a large number of ads in venues where people follow Linux. You'll see a lot of them on Slashdot, for instance. I even get them in my Linux Magazine and Linux Journal subscriptions.
It's targeted advertisement.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
LinuxWorld *used* to be a Web magazine put out by an arm of IDG. I worked for that group in the late 90s-early 00s as a copy editor when it put out JavaWorld (still around), SunWorld (which became UnixInsider and then went away) and WindowsTechEdge (which flopped). It was then run by Nick Petreley, if that name means anything to you.
The San Francisco-based group was merged by our parent company into a division called "ITworld," the main site for which still exists. But then came the dot-com crash and all the west coast sites were eliminated ('cept JavaWorld). LinuxWorld was taken over briefly by IDG.net, but eventually was sold to Sys-Con. Don't know much of what happened after that...
As an editor (now former editor) for LinuxWorld, I've been attempting to get details of the DoS against Sys-Con all week and bring them to our readers. Just yesterday I received those details and was working on a story about the DoS to appear in LinuxWorld. Since I don't think the story will be appearing there, it's now here. From TFA: "There is still some doubt over whether the DoS attacks against Sys-Con actually existed or whether they were the result of 'The Slashdot Effect' for lack of a better term. I believe the DoS attacks did exist. I too was initially skeptical but based on e-mail correspondence I now believe them to have happened." More in my blog.
You are supposed to register your use of the Linux trademark here:
http://www.linuxmark.org/
Cost is between $300 and $600.
I don't know how many people bother with this however because the Linux trademark has never been actively enforced.
On friday, May 13, I got an unsolicited message at my work address, signed by the owner of sys-con telling me I was eligible for a free subscription to some magazine. It also told me I was currently subscribed to his mailing list as xxxx@blahxx.com
and "follow this link to unsubscribe". Yeah, right-
If you want to help these people out, start writing to the advertisers of Sys-com urging them to take their business elsewhere. If they start pulling out it won't be long before a change in management occurs. Here are some of the advertisers:
Revelation Software
EV1 Servers (they don't need any more negative attention)
Software AG
Forum Systems
Skyway Software
Oracle
Altova
Sugarcrm
Mindreef
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
I was the editor of LinuxWorld in the IDG.net era. IDG licensed the title and content of LinuxWorld to Sys-Con in the summer of 2003 for a period of five years.
Sys-Con's business model is interesting, or at least it was in 2003 when I spoke to the company about continuing with LinuxWorld. None of the editors for any of Sys-Con's publications or Web sites are paid. Neither are authors.
The business model of relying on volunteer editorial seems to work because a) it's cost effective if your objective is low CPM, and b) Sys-Con seems adept at finding people willing to work for exposure, c) advertisers and readers don't seem to mind that the editorial product is assembled in this manner.
I did not choose to stay with LinuxWorld when the transfer occurred.
Mark Cappel
Public figures deal with this kind of poking and prying all the time. Celebrities deal with paparazi. Politicians deal with people digging into every nook and cranny of their life. Innocent, ordinary people who are thrust into the spotlight have all sorts of private details published and pored over.
As others before me have pointed out, there is a big difference between tabloids and reputable newspapers and magazines. I never read tabloids, I find them disgusting stupid garbage. Now, I believed Sys-con to be a company that dealt with serious journalism, but it seems I have been proven wrong. Therefore I have cancelled my subscription to Java Developer Journal.
and to claim her story was a gross violation of journalistic ethics is a biased response. (The Google cache of her story is still available. If you haven't read it, read it yourself.)
I HAVE read it, and it was a breach of journalistic ethics. If you think my opinion is biased, ask Fred Brown, co-chair of the Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Commitee:
http://turner.linuxworld.com/read/1277987.htm
If Daryl McBride's personal information had been published (and it seems like at some point it was, although I can't find the story now), everyone would be cheering the public's "right to know."
Yes it was, I have seen it posted on Slashdot by ACs on serveral occasions. Guess what, it wasn't cheered as the public's right to know, it was modded down to -1 on all occasions I saw, and people who replied and said that this was wrong tended to be modded up.
If you choose to put yourself in the spotlight, you can expect to have the press breathing down your neck. You don't have to like it but you might as well get used to it. It's a part of American life. It's the obverse side of the "freedom of the press" coin. Would you really prefer to live in a place where the press is constrained?
I believe you are presenting a false dichotomy here. You essentially say: Either we are against freedom of the press and pro-censorship, or we should shut up about this case. I haven't seen one post here advocating censorship. We are expressing our own DISLIKE of these tactings, and say that we choose to not buy Sys-con products in the future. Big difference.
Apart from these things I agree with your article. Foul tactics should always be fought against. You must be careful that you don't become the thing what you hate.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Turner was senior editor for the print edition of LinuxWorld, but he had no control over the content of the web site. As far as I know, he was never happy about seeing anti-Linux attack dog O'Gara's articles on the web site, but there was nothing he could do. I suspect that the PJ article, and Sys-con's refusal to apologize for publishing it, was the last straw.
Doug Moen
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.