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Update on LWN and subscriptions
As of this writing, there are almost 1800 subscribers to LWN.net; we have
also sold a small number of (small) corporate subscriptions. This level of
support is almost sufficient for two full-time staff at minimal salaries - a
huge step in the right direction, but still not enough to keep LWN going in
its current form. While we hope and expect that the number of subscribers
will continue to grow, we will have to take steps to live within our
available means for the near future. It is fully our intent to deliver on
the full term of the one-year subscriptions that many of you have bought;
to do that we will have to be careful now.
So there will be some changes to LWN. We're working on the details now, and will post another update soon. But it looks like LWN is here to stay, and that is good news. Let it never be said that the free software community is unwilling to support the services it finds valuable. A few other notes:
As always, thank you all for supporting LWN.net. (Log in to post comments)
Update on LWN and subscriptions Posted Oct 9, 2002 16:48 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] Thankyou for keeping the business practices out. I am beginning to agree with others that maybe having a header on each page that says:Number of active subscribers: With a link that goes down to something like an openbook practices. Having just finished re-reading "The Great Game of Business" I think its methods dovetail greatly with OpenSource community. http://www.greatgame.com/
Update on LWN and subscriptions Posted Oct 9, 2002 17:23 UTC (Wed) by larsga (guest, #2801) [Link] Great news to hear that you are doing so well with the subscriptions, and that LWN seems be able to carry on after all. Made my day, really. :)I had cookie problems in Opera 6.02 for Linux, but they are gone now, so it does seem like you solved that problem.
Update on LWN and subscriptions Posted Oct 9, 2002 19:29 UTC (Wed) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link] Excellent. Please please PLEASE keep us informed of how you are doing, what's going on, and what is needed. When LWN first announced that "this issue will be the last", you where surprised when people responded by sending you money.Well, the reason was simply that even though you had mentioned the dire financial situation, people had not *really* understood it. We are slow. We need to be told directly and openly. We need to get the facts. "This issue will be the last unless a miracle happens" will get the point across. "We're sort of in need of maybe something like some cash or something" will not. (yes I'm paraphrasing here..) Anyways, best of luck.
Update on LWN and subscriptions Posted Oct 9, 2002 20:32 UTC (Wed) by csawtell (subscriber, #986) [Link] I've been good and purchased a 3 month subscription, but I'm concerned that only 1799 others have sone so. In order for a publication such as LWN to be successful in any meaning of the word I would have thought that there would have to be at least 2 orders of magnitude more subscribers.I wonder if you could bring yourselves to think about using a presentation mode on LWN similar to that which is used by The Economist. Over there they mark the ( hopefully better ) articles as "Premium Content" ( i.e. pay to view only ) on the front page so readers can see immediately what they are missing out on by not coughing up a pretty expensive subscription. If you contrast this sum to the LWN sub. you will see that the LWN sub. is really just pure chicken feed. Even I, on welfare in a second tier country, can afford a sub. and think it's good value! By the way, the link above does not work in pre-view mode. It points to a non-existant URL somewhere deep in the innards of LWN.
Update on LWN and subscriptions Posted Oct 9, 2002 22:38 UTC (Wed) by rogerd (guest, #4170) [Link] Not to bring up an endless topic, but there is probably a lot of expertise available here.What is the state of the art in generic 'pay per view' technology? I assume that many sites would
Update on LWN and subscriptions Posted Oct 9, 2002 23:29 UTC (Wed) by Gnulix (guest, #1399) [Link] Since there has been lots and lots of attention about this problem for quite a while, why haven't there been an increase in the number of ads? Surely there must be a couple of companies left that are willing to sponsor (through ads, if nothing else) a site as popular as this? I'm sure it would score loads of brownie points for any and all companies that support LWN in these troubled times. Let's hear not only from the ground crew, but also from the big wigs. RH, IBM, HP, and so on... Time to put your money where your mouths are!
Update on LWN and subscriptions Posted Oct 10, 2002 3:35 UTC (Thu) by barbara (subscriber, #3014) [Link] Speaking of ads... I'm sure the small sponsored-link ads help the overall financial bottomline, but there have to be more of them. One sure-fire way to accomplish this is to accept credit card payments for these ads. I have 2 ad campaigns ready to roll for my project, Loads of Linux Links (http://loll.sourceforge.net/linux/links/index.html), but am waiting for the credit card option. Please LWN make this option available so we can rock and roll with lots of ads.
Update on LWN and subscriptions Posted Oct 10, 2002 12:40 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Restoring credit card payment for ads is high on the list. It was a casualty of our hassles with our previous processor, and, for various reasons, getting it going again will take a bit of time. As soon as we can, we'll certainly do it.
Update on LWN and subscriptions Posted Oct 10, 2002 1:54 UTC (Thu) by TheOneKEA (subscriber, #615) [Link] Congrats on getting 1800 subscriptions. PSN I intend to subscribe, but not yet :(BTW, you guys finally fixed all the cookies problems; Mozilla 1.0.1 now retains my LWN cookie quite nicely. Great job :)
Suggestion re: donations Posted Oct 10, 2002 3:03 UTC (Thu) by kubrick (guest, #752) [Link] Accept donated money into a subscription fund.Accept nominations for free subscriptions from people working on Free Software projects. At a certain point (e.g. every 6 months) have a poll of all people subscribed to see which people from the list of nominations should get a free 6 month subscription, up to the value of the donated money. That way the money is paying for something, LWN gets to keep it, and the software authors who can't otherwise afford it (ones who can and want to read LWN should have paid already :) will be able to stay informed. It may not be a perfect idea, but hopefully it has some potential.
Update on LWN and subscriptions Posted Oct 10, 2002 7:49 UTC (Thu) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link] Hi all,I think *this* article should be really available without subscription, so that people who are not (yet) subscribed can see what the current situation of lwn.net is. Bye
Update on LWN and subscriptions Posted Oct 10, 2002 12:41 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] In fact, it was (and is) freely available, and was posted standalone on the front page.
Re: Donations + more info please Posted Oct 10, 2002 8:25 UTC (Thu) by pointwood (subscriber, #2814) [Link] What about adding an option to pay whatever a person wants for a subscription? You currently have 3 options (3 prices), make a forth option that makes it possible to pay whatever the person would like to pay (as long as it is more than the minimum price, of course).On the Subscriptions page, there are no information about what it costs. It would be nice for those interested, to be able to see what the price is before creating an account.
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