Just say no to freeloaders

Just say no to freeloaders

The delay for non-subscribers is going to have to be more than just a day or two. If not, too many freeloaders will accustom themselves to the notion that LWN comes out on Friday evening, rather than Wednesday evening. To put it bluntly, the freeloaders must feel some pain, or else they will never subscribe. I know this is harsh, but reality is often harsh. And I can say this as one who has donated to LWN and as one who pays full price for every Linux distro experimented with. The Linux community is going to have to accept the fact that quality content costs money to produce, and that somehow, somewhere, the creators must be paid. It is time to grow up and get rid of the free mp3 and free software mindset that never even considers compensating creators for their work. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. It's a fundamental law of physics, kids. Learn it. Live it. Love it.

Moving along, the folks at LWN might want to talk to the folks at TidBITS and exchange ideas. TidBITS is an independent, highly respected Apple Macintosh email publication that creates a lot of original and worthwhile content. They accept donations, have advertisers,sell stuff, etc. They too have struggled in the aftermath of the dot.bomb era. They have also been around for a long time, and have extensive experience in successful electronic publishing. Unfortunately,people from the Macintosh culture are accustomed to paying for stuff, while folks from the Linux culture are not. So not all of the experiences of the TidBITS crowd would translate directly into workable ideas for LWN. Still, it might be worth a shot. They are on the web at: http://www.tidbits.com/