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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."
tuxmagazine.com also provides free magazines in PDF format. I've read through all of them and must say they are very good. But I do miss being able to hold something in my hands while I lie back in bed. A laptop is too awkward for casual reading of PDFs.
Meh.
someone was willing to take it upon themselves to work their asses off in their free time and get the best content from developers, users, etc... and were to try and create a physical add supported magazine would you subscribe?
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
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.
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.
In some cases, yes, despite it being more expensive in the end due to higher administration costs.
Open source is happening; I am a pretty darn senior IT consultant by day, and large enterprises in the IT space are building stuff with it.
Smart ones are also doing true life cycle cost estimates, and functional and reliability trade studies and analysis, and in some cases are chosing not to use open source or only use it for limited applications.
But it's here, for real.
I am not an open source zealout; I spent several years at a Sun VAR and am quite familiar with "commrecial" OSes, enterprise infrastructure and business applications, etc. I still have a good relationship with local Sun VARs and will recommend Sun/Solaris/Veritas/(pick your major brand storage)/Oracle etc when technically and financially and operationally appropriate. Which they still are for significant parts of the enterprise IT problems set.
But Linux is clearly heeerrreeeee....
http://www.o3magazine.com/o3issue1.torrent
Seriously... this is so the way to go to avoid getting /.'d...
It would be very interesting (at least for me) to read about the making of O3. The open source DTP solution is somewhat disputed these days.
"The publication was built entirely with Open Source tools, including the GIMP, Scribus and Open Office. It is distributed in PDF format..."
One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?
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WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
I'm going to assume you're talking about pdf here. I'll also assure you that the format is indeed open
Somebody call the Whaaambulance!
This magazine is far more usable than the FSM one - I didn't have to click past the blog front page, ignore the bazillion ads flashing at me, pick an issue, then scroll down 6 screens to see if I want to read anything.
O3 has a concise current issue content list on the website's home page. The static ads are IN the magazine, not flashing and surrounding it. It took me 3 looks to even see there was a (lime green?!) link to the current issue of FSM on that website, then I had to read a paragraph to get an idea of what's in it. There's just no contest as far as presentation goes.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
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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.