The H is shutting down

[Posted July 19, 2013 by corbet]

The H has announced its closure. "Although The H has produced many widely read stories, it has not been possible to effectively monetise that traffic to produce a working business model." Here at LWN we understand that problem well. The H has indeed produced a lot of quality content over the years; we are genuinely sad to see it go.

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Posted Jul 19, 2013 15:09 UTC (Fri) by richo123 (guest, #24309) [Link]

How is the LWN business model going? It might be of interest to those of us who are not subscribers.....

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 19, 2013 15:31 UTC (Fri) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]

If you like it, please found it :-) Entry prices are very reasonable!

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 19, 2013 15:33 UTC (Fri) by webmastir (guest, #59528) [Link]

I've been thinking about it!

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 19, 2013 15:40 UTC (Fri) by Quazatron (guest, #4368) [Link]

LWN was the only site I actually subscribed to. I stopped renewing my subscription when the economic crisis hit southern Europe and I was unemployed.
Now I've been employed for a while and things are looking up, so I expect to renew my subscription soon.
The quality of the content LWN provides is well worth the price.
I'm sorry to see The H go away, I hope they can find an alternative funding model instead.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 19, 2013 15:40 UTC (Fri) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]

Mr Corbet :-)

I would probably change the cheapest subscription name, not to discourage people from paying the lowest price. I remember _not_ subscribing because I found the second level too expensive and did not feel like I was 'starving', so was ashamed to opt for the first level.

Just my ¢2...

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 19, 2013 19:43 UTC (Fri) by Tara_Li (guest, #26706) [Link]

Perhaps make a second level, that funds for the same amount, titled "I'm a cheapskate and proud of it!". Or "I subscribed to LWN at this level and all I got was this silly title!"

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 19, 2013 20:39 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

I find the names of the subscription levels very clever. This is how I understand them:

- professional : normal price
- starving : "LWN charity" price not really funding the site.

The charity name looks indeed like it is designed to discourage most people and push them to the normal price instead. I suspect this works well and that people not subscribing at all as a result are the exception.

Maybe the charity price could not be fixed but in some range - my 2 cents.

If you are ashamed of LWN doing you charity and your pride is more important then you found the correct, very simple solution: don't subscribe. Unlike food and shelter, you can actually live without an LWN subscription.

PS: I did let LWN do charity to me once upon a time and survived the shame :-)

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 20, 2013 0:35 UTC (Sat) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

If there's a problem with the pricing levels, it's the implication that LWN is only for developers and the primary reason for different pricing levels is personal finances. Neither of those is necessarily true. There are at least some subscribers who are interested as users rather than developers (I am one) and their support level is likely to be lower than somebody whose interest is professional. While I find the support level names amusing, it might be better to name them according to the feature level (e.g. basic, standard, premium, fanatical supporter) or on a standard level scale (e.g. bronze, silver, gold, platinum).

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 23, 2013 9:56 UTC (Tue) by ersi (subscriber, #64521) [Link]

I sort of agree with this - though I'm not so sure if it's really a problem.

I subscribed (or well, vouched for LWN.net to my employer). I'm more of a "user" rather than a "developer".

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 23, 2013 22:16 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

Since LWN is far from restricting itself to Linux kernel development (or any other Linux topic), I don't see how it would be possible to draw any clear line between [LWN] "user" and [LWN] "developer".

PS: any serious system administrator whose job goes beyond editing config files is a developer of some kind. A developer is obviously not just someone who writes kernel C code.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 19, 2013 21:24 UTC (Fri) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link]

Do you feel a discounted price for the first few months would be more palatable? Some subscription services do it and I wonder how effective it is (obviously it's an easy bet for phone lines and other utilities).

The H is shutting down

Posted Aug 1, 2013 16:12 UTC (Thu) by wtanksleyjr (subscriber, #74601) [Link]

I've liked LWN for YEARS, I just paid for it -- immediately after seeing this article. I needed the scare, I guess. Thanks, LWN.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 23, 2013 9:53 UTC (Tue) by ersi (subscriber, #64521) [Link]

I'd just like to tell you about the "group subscription" option. I've personally vouched for LWN.net subscription at my current employer - which agreed and added everyone who expressed interest internally. (For public interest, at least 10 interested persons).

It's a "cheap way" for you to personally get access to LWN.net's quality material. It's a good recurring transaction for LWN.net, that's unlikely to stop recurring. If I remember correctly, it adds less to the LWN.net coffers than a regular personal professional subscription; But you can always quit the group and get a personal subscription at the time of your choosing.

I personally, am considering quitting the group subscription myself and going for a personal professional subscription. If that does not happen, I would gladly do it if I'd ever switch employer at least.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 19, 2013 15:50 UTC (Fri) by sensor (guest, #91930) [Link]

Maybe the crappy Phoronix will be the last man standing.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 20, 2013 2:47 UTC (Sat) by rbrito (subscriber, #66188) [Link]

> Maybe the crappy Phoronix will be the last man standing.

Yes, maybe the sensacionalist ones that churn small articles as "previews to keep tuned in for full benchmarks" with a single article divided in some 10+ pages full of mistakes are the unfortunate way to go.

Badly designed, non-scientific benchmarks (error bars, standard deviations, confidence intervals?), chockfull of non-Free software, with pejorative comments about Free efforts (e.g. nouveau, radeon etc.) saying, essentially, that such efforts are "too little, too late", instead of throwing in incentives for the users to help test, debug or even code on such projects.

It is also sad that Slashdot has also long been true to the "news for nerds, stuff that matters", because most of the articles (humm, actually, brief paragraphs) they publish are not technical or are very polemical, like if they were only published to generate discussions/page impressions.

Perhaps there is still some hope that The H can revisit their position...

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 20, 2013 6:41 UTC (Sat) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]

Phoronix definitely is not without a flaw, but it's still a good source of interesting news and pointers to recent Linux developments, at least to me.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 22, 2013 13:35 UTC (Mon) by Frej (guest, #4165) [Link]

The plots do include error bars, and the information gained is not without merit. The analysis though is quite crude and sometimes benchmark are very synthetic and useless for showing anything. But I believe it actually does help gpu driver folks.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 24, 2013 1:55 UTC (Wed) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link]

Your trashing of Phoronix is widely inappropriate, and to put it bluntly, in bad taste.

Phoronix is a great chearleader for Free/Open Source for one thing.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 19, 2013 16:15 UTC (Fri) by jamielinux (subscriber, #82303) [Link]

I was sad when I saw this. Out of the major FOSS news sites, I only really read LWN and The H. Not many other websites have such consistent quality.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 19, 2013 18:43 UTC (Fri) by quartz (guest, #37351) [Link]

I have to say that, until about 4 or 5 months ago, I had never heard of the H. I only found out because of Phoronix, so I guess they can't be all bad :)

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 19, 2013 22:37 UTC (Fri) by xorbe (guest, #3165) [Link]

If you google for "linux news", LWN is on page 1, but H-Online is on page 9.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 21, 2013 0:45 UTC (Sun) by richarson (subscriber, #74226) [Link]

Well, The H is not a Linux only news site, they also cover Windows, OSX, etc, software in general and also hardware, for example.

Their Kernel Log and Processor Whispers series were gold, I'll miss them.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 21, 2013 6:06 UTC (Sun) by chirlu (subscriber, #89906) [Link]

There is one remedy: Start learning German!

Prozessorgeflüster (Processor Whispers) is a column, actually much older than The H, from Heise’s German magazine c’t. It was translated into English for The H. The German column will continue to be published and is available at Heise online.

Likewise, you can find the original German version of Thorsten Leemhuis’s Kernel-Log.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 21, 2013 11:57 UTC (Sun) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]

The H is a Heise site (what did you think the H in H-Online stood for ?) I assumed most of the content other than maybe the articles by Glyn Moody are just translated from the German articles. I just checked and at least some of the articles by Glyn Moody are in German on hiese.de as well. So I don't really know.

In the Netherlands their German C'T magazine also has a Dutch version, so it's not something they haven't done before.

I read H-online because working in this sector I read and work with the English language all day. For example most programming languages use English keywords.

It is harder mentally to switch to German and read heise.de than to keep reading in English on h-online.com Reading C'T magazine in German in the past wasn't hard, but needs some practise for the mental switch to have as little overhead as possible.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 21, 2013 20:46 UTC (Sun) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link]

Heh, I do read German, thanks for that. I feel better now.

I would say that so long as the upstream content is still being posted in German, the H is not gone, it is just sleeping. With a little help from its friends it will come back.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 22, 2013 17:46 UTC (Mon) by richarson (subscriber, #74226) [Link]

Yeah, I know about heise.de, I checked it out because I think I saw an english article on their site (pointed from somewhere else). Maybe it was just a special occasion.

Unfortunately 2 languages (my native spanish and my poor mostly self-taught english) are enough for me for the moment :)

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 19, 2013 19:00 UTC (Fri) by AngryChris (subscriber, #74783) [Link]

I'm very sad to see this. I subscribe to LWN and I'd be more than happy to give my money to The H-Online also if they had some kind of subscription. These are two of my favorite Linux news sites.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 20, 2013 2:32 UTC (Sat) by zenaan (subscriber, #3778) [Link]

Jon, perhaps some The H editors would like to do some editorial work for LWN?

Perhaps a simple marketing campaign "hello, who would like to see our content continue in a more limited form, please subscribe to LWN" or something.

Just a thought.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 21, 2013 13:29 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

maybe a collaboration is possible. As some mentioned, the H had some excellent content (the columns about kernel and cpu stuff, mostly) and perhaps they can continue at LWN.

The H is shutting down

Posted Jul 20, 2013 4:30 UTC (Sat) by cma (guest, #49905) [Link]

Dammit! I'll miss H :_(