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New Free Open Source Enterprise Magazine
An anonymous reader writes "A new free Open Source Enterprise magazine was launched today. The publication was built entirely with Open Source tools, including the GIMP, Scribus and Open Office. It is distributed in PDF format, and focuses on Open Source Solutions related to Enterprise Data Networking. The first issue looks at some interesting stuff include MultiLayer Switching in Linux. A torrent is also available."
...I just realized how much of a nerd I really am, by getting excited about this. Time to convert it to reflow format for the pda...
FLR
We in the Open Source community need to stop being so introspective, and start MARKETING the advantages of open source to the suits.
Um, that's what this magazine does. This issue includes information about rolling your own telephony system with open source tools to reduce costs and infrastructure requirements.
It's a one-two punch: a magazine ABOUT open-source solutions, created WITH open-source solutions. Just on virtue of them using open-source software to create the magazine they've demonstrated one area where open source can shine. Every time they publish a new issue this fact will be highlighted.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Just use a printer. Certainly the cost of paper/toner/depreciation is less than your typical print issue.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
now there's a good idea. why advertize the software of the future using yesterday's technology?
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
I've looking over issue #1 and am wondering who exactly the target audience is. At first, I would have assumed it was for hard-core FOSS-lovers who want to know how they can convince their boss to use the latest OSS application (or who want to know about "the next big enterprise OSS" thing that they should give a try). However, consider some of these quotes:
An article on page 15 ("Opening the Jar on Google Honeypots") explains: "With this growth in the Internet, a problem arose: finding the page with the information you are actually looking for. This is where search engines come into play, allowing Internet users to find the page that they want."
On page 23, they have an article "An Introduction to Linux and Open Source for Business" written in a Q&A style. The first question is "What is this 'Open Source' thing I keep hearing about?"
You get the idea. These articles are clearly targetted at people who have no experience with OSS, but are curious. They even seem to be targetted at management-types who may be interested in learning about new trends in technology. There are other articles that are clearly aimed at a more experience and techno-saavy crowd. So I guess they are really trying to cover the board, and get a wide variety of people reading their magazine.
I guess I'm wondering if that's the best strategy. For a printed magazine, I can understand trying to appeal to newbies and zealots alike, since they both have good reasons for buying the magazine. For a web-only magazine, however, I strongly suspect that the only people who will ever read it will be the geek crowd anyways, in which case it seems like a bit of a waste to have so many introductory articles.
if it is for who i think it is for then they really need to work on parts of their delivery, the content seems good.
for example:
In the "buisness" section that explains opensource and the OS licenses and such, there is a panel on the last page where some guy is quoted and he uses "FUD". There is no explination of the term. Did i miss the memo that went out to everyone's bosses explaining these sorts of terms?
I don't think Scribus supports that kind of output (certainly not the podcast, for sure). Its main output is PDF/X-3, which is appropriate since layouts in Scribus, similar to Adobe Indesign, are capable of containing vector images (as well as raster images), and PDF can contain either. The magazine surely could be formatted as RSS or some other XML, but then you'd be downloading the XML and the images separately.
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See my post above for reasons why I'm judging it on presentation. I'm sure that both have good information in them, I just don't have time to sift through the cruft to find it.
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OK, point taken.
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Someone has obviously put a lot of effort into FSM, and good on them for doing it, but people get a bit pissy when a random person starts undermining their good efforts. Also, what's in it for me if I do try to improve it?
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Well, I happen to be FSM's editor in chief. I guess I am "them"!
What's in it for me...?
* Improving a site that works towards the creation of free (as in FREEDOM) contents
* Getting to give something back to the community
Why do people send patches to GNU/Linux? Why do people help free software projects?
Why have we worked on FSM for _free_ for more than one year?
(I guess the answer shouldn't be "to be told that it takes too many clicks to get to the contents")
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"Right then, ditch the website ad revenue because it's cluttering the content. If you must use AdWords, put them at the bottom - not right where people look for the content.
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No worries. I am assuming you are willing to send us a monthly cheque - that's great! We will use that money for hosting.
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Make a bullet list with the issue's contents on the main page
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Which issue exactly? The latest?
Where do you suggest we should put annuncements and latest articles?
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and under each issue heading in the archives.
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Do you know how big this page woud become in let's say 3 months?
Doing things is actually much harder than talking about them, you see. If you set up a mock site with FSM the way you think it should look, I will me more than happy to apply the changes.
(A word or warning: we've tried already)
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And don't use that lime green text, it's hard to read - use black or white text for each article heading, and a lime green background box for each heading if you want to keep those colours. And blank space isn't necessarily advertising space
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See above. A mock site would be most welcome.
Bye,
Merc.
Well, yes, I do in fact care what tools my car was built with. And I also like the fact when I take it to the mechanic for a service I can talk with him, go into his workshop and inspect his tools, and I get the choice of what parts go into my car.
Matt
A more likely scenario is that the CEO will replace his reliable and expensive (but the purchase costs were written off 2 years ago and it's well bedded in with minimal support costs so, on paper at least, it's currently close to free) cluster running Oracle for a bunch of over priced blades running Windows 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server (plus have to retrain all their support staff) on the strength of an article in eWeek or a Gartner Report.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall