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Posted Aug 16, 2010 13:46 UTC (Mon) by jeremiah (subscriber, #1221)
Parent article: The LinuxCon media panel

I'd prefer to skip the ads altogether for software reviews from a trusted source. Sort of the consumer reports for software. I want negative reviews along with positive reviews that are categorized according to what the software does. LWN is one of the few, perhaps only, places I would trust to be honest. But it will never happen, honest reviews are rarely in the advertiser's best interest. We have higher expectations when it comes to commercial software than we do for OSS (not a flame). It wold be nice if there was some way to ethically charge venders to have their software reviewed, without it influencing the outcome of the review. Perhaps a directory of software that a commercial vendor could pay for a listing, after their software was reviewed in an unbiased fashion. Point being I'd love to be able to come to LWN, as I already do for somethings, and see a list of reviews for a category of software or hardware, where the review was honest, and their was some flag or something that said the vendor upon seeing the review choose to support LWN or some other FOSS project. I don't know if that makes any since, but I like to know about new software/hardware that meets my needs and that it comes from a company that supports my FOSS values. Independently of the outcome of the review. It's a sticky place for a news/review site to try and be, but maybe there is a business model in there somewhere.


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