Ten-year timeline part 4: the end and the beginning

___Kerneltraffic and LWN have vastly different writing styles. I actually preferred KT over
LWN.

___KT picked up the interesting threads on LKML, and made an interesting read solely based on
developer's citations, mostly direct speech. It was an art of taking snippets from everywhere,
and pasting it together again in a coherent fashion. This gave it a feel like you were
listening to a parliament discussion -- judgement: "raw material".
The last KT#335 issue covered 14 threads.

___LWN on the other hand uses the usual "newspaper" style. (This week: mem_notify and the blk
rq api.) The Editor makes himself familiar with the topic and then writes down his findings
from his viewpoint. Standard (e.g. "cups slow on linux-2.6.24") and philosophical
(hypothethical "libata does not power up my usb coffee pad, who broke it?") matters don't get
much attention, while really technical things are explained in a way so that people who are
not a master of the particular subsystem still get to understand what it's about -- judgement:
"pre-chewed".
___Sometimes, there are only two [longer] stories, sometimes there are four stories in the
Kernel section of the Weekly Edition (e.g. 2006-01-17) - it kinda fluctuates. (Probably
related to LKML I guess, everyone's busy with merging for 2.6.25 right now.)

___I dunno if LWN has the necessary manpower for it, but getting to read something KT-style
would be great. Does not need to be a dozen of threads, but maybe two, three threads that did
not make it into a "newspaper" article. Spot on: the ext3 feature freeze, er, ext3 freeze
feature thread, softpanic v2, and perhaps the ext4 list could have been showcased KT-style for
this week.

Agreed.  LWN is worth my subscription (or lump sums, depending on my income at any given time)
exactly because of the high S:N here.  Even when I've read the news which is posted here on
its original pages, a) it is noteworthy that LWN mentions it, and b) the comments from readers
here are usually worth a better look than some other news outlets.  High-signal, high-clue
newshounding and editing, with higher-than-average-clue readership.

Consider that no other place would be likely to get away with such a text-centric design, and
still draw readership.  It's the quality of the product over the packaging.

Actually, I think that people subscribe to LWN in large part because there's real tech
writing. The journalism is a good thing, too, of course, but I think that keeping your editor
writing documentation for 2-3 kernel features each week would be worth indulging his choice of
business even if it weren't beneficial on its own merits. On the other hand, I think that LWN
is in a better position to do good journalism because it has an secure value in the technical
articles independent of the popularity of the news it reports.

LWN is the only computer related mag (on- and offline) that I bother paying a subscription
for. The reason is that all the rest of them have become product review or preview magazines,
where even most of the articles try to sell me gizmos or software. Oh, they usually have
"developer pages" too - of the learn php/python/gimp/something else in 5 installments,
blatantly ripping off some online tutorial (and usually doing worse). And to top it off, they
have some month old news.

All in all, LWN is the only place writing about what's interesting in a timely fashion,
cutting the crap and the disguised ads. Which makes it well worth my money. :)

BTW Did you actually throw that party? I believe I explicitly tagged my donation as "for
beer". Was it good? ;)

It's the only online publication I've paid for too.  And well worth it.

I can't remember what I thought about comments at the time, but now they're one of my favorite
features.

Another bonus from the comments is seeing kernel developers (or other OSS developers) respond
to stories they are involved in. It's great seeing Ingo Molnar and others add to the
discussion. 

Though, sometimes I wonder how many of them read just to see if they've made Quotes of the
Week :)

Agreed.  I signed up for a subscription not long after they switched to that model.  I
recently moved up to the Project Leader level, because I can justify the expense.

The insightful articles here, especially on the weekly kernel page, are what bring me back
week after week.  I've learned so much about the kernel's internals and the challenges kernel
developers face reading the detailed articles there.  The ensuing discussions are also
enlightening.  If there's something the article missed, often it's captured in the comments
that follow.  I know I've asked a few questions here and have been thankful for the responses.

My day job had nothing to do with Linux, and in my personal life I haven't even compiled my
own kernel in probably 5 years.  (I've been using Linux for over 14 years now, FWIW.)
However, lately, I'm finding all the stuff I learned here and a couple other places (Kernel
Traffic and KernelTrap come to mind) are becoming more and more useful in my professional
life.  I'm a CPU architect these days, and knowing how the Linux works is very important to
architecting the CPU correctly if we expect to run it in any reasonable form.  My fellow
architects at work who haven't followed Linux like I have in their "copious free time" are at
a disadvantage.  :-)  Maybe I can get my employer to pick up the tab for my subscription now.
;-)

LWN holds a distinction over the other two sites I mentioned, since it goes further to
actually digest the content and present it as a coherent whole.  Kernel Traffic, while
interesting in its own right, often put me to sleep unfortunately.  It was too much raw
information.  KernelTrap has been more dynamic, but it still focuses mostly on bringing
interesting threads from LKML and other lists to my attention more than providing actual
original articles exploring concepts in depth.  LWN ends up being much more educational as a
result.  Articles such as the RCU series and detailed explanations of the various schedulers
and so on... I don't know where else I would find that!

Here's to another 10 years!

True. For example, from a Norwegian perspective:

$10 in 2002 was 67kr - which was aproximately the net pay from 45 minutes of working a
beginner-level programming-job.

Today $10 is 55kr, which is aproximately the net pay from 20 minutes of working a
beginner-level programming-job.

The price of Lwn measured against what matters, salaries, is more than -halved- in these 5
years.

Even if we ignored the increased living-standard and counted only the dollar-fall and
inflation, it's still a price-fall from 70nok to 55nok in 6 years, a significant decrease.

Besides, LWN has "starving hacker" modes for those who have problems paying the "normal"
price, and that is dirt-cheap, the price of a hotdog in Norwegian terms, literally (actually
in many locations the hotdog may cost more)

The idea is relatively common in industries such as entertainment and 
hospitality, but often works somewhat different than you outlined.  As you 
outlined, one party ultimately ends up paying hard cash as a kickback.  
The way it often works in E&H is as a "coupon exchange".  That is, an 
entertainment facility will ship coupons to various local hotels/motels 
and restaurants to distribute there, which in turn ship coupons back to 
the entertainment facilities for distribution there.  The cross-promotion 
thus costs little but the printing and mailing costs, but tourists and 
hungry restaurant patrons pick up and sometimes use the entertainment 
coupons, while after their entertainment, patrons there are often tired 
and hungry and find the restaurant and/or motel coupons useful as well.  
As an additional bonus, all participating establishments are seen as 
active participants in the local community, boosting trade not only for 
themselves but for others as well.  Of course, the usual government and/or 
chamber of commerce sponsored natural and man-made attraction tourist info 
fits right into this model, with the various coupons generally displayed 
right beside the various informational pamphlets.  Ideally, tourists take 
some of them home in their souvenir packets and end up sharing them with 
others, who come the next year...

Actually, LWN sort of does this already, informally.  I discovered LWN 
back shortly before the subscription thing began, as a result of finding 
it a site choice in knewsticker.  LWN in turn covers KDE and points to 
stories of interest on the dot (dot.kde.org, KDE's news site).  I'm not 
sure how much of this is just covering the territory, however, and how 
much might be deliberate, but it's worth trying a bit more of the 
deliberate stuff. =8^)

(As for me, I'd love to subscribe and did for awhile.  However, my 
conscious began to prick me as I realized I was making demands of folks 
like ATI to provide open source drivers or at least specs for their stuff 
before I sent any more of my money their way, yet LWN, who had made the 
promise to open their own code years ago, had yet to do so and was still 
getting my money.  Thus, it became a personal integrity issue, and after 
letting the LWN folks know why I could no longer subscribe, I had to let 
my subscription lapse.  LWN still has that promise to open their 
code "once it gets a bit more ready".  During the intervening years, Sun 
has promised and almost completed opening up Java, and ATI, after itself 
promising and failing to deliver for years, has begun opening its hardware 
specs to the community as well, yet, despite what I must assume are the 
best intentions, LWN continues to prevaricate on its own promises.  When 
as a FLOSS community proponent I can as a man of integrity again sponsor 
this otherwise great beacon of the FLOSS community with my own 
subscription, I'll be /extremely/ happy to do so -- as happy as I'll be 
when I can finally install a fully approved and fully open Java, and when 
I can purchase an ATI card once again well supported by FLOSS drivers.  
Meanwhile, I won't purchase cards that won't work well with drivers I can 
actually install to run them (EULAs may be legal here and if I can't agree 
to them, I can't legally run the software they cover), I can't install a 
partially proprietaryware Java, and I can't fund an LWN running on code it 
has continually pledged to release for years, yet has failed to do so.  If 
others find themselves free to do so, I wish them well, as I really do 
enjoy LWN and would hate to see it die, but funding it with my 
subscription money is something I simply cannot do under the current 
circumstances, however I might otherwise love to do it.  Hopefully someday 
the issue will go away and I can once again fund with my own subscription 
a beacon of the FLOSS message, made even more powerful a beacon as it 
finally walks its own talk.)

Duncan