Is it really The End?
Posted Aug 1, 2002 23:28 UTC (Thu) by
DaveK (subscriber, #2531)
Parent article:
Is it really The End?
A few more thoughts, for what they're worth.
A lot of people harp on about communism in the free software community, and come out with a lot of rubbish, and portray communism and socialism in a very negative light. Communism in its true form, like most socialist veins, is about the workers getting paid a fair due for the work they do, and not being exploited by their paymasters. In a slightly deeper sense it achieves this by requiring that the means of prduction be controlled by the workers.
Expanding this to LWN requires the readers to pay a fair due to the LWN staff for their time and expertise, call it a tax, a subscription or a contribution. These people need to be paid. Anything else could be considered exploitation.
How many readers out there would be happy if their employer decided to stop charging for their goods/services, and decided to let their customers have it for free, only paying their staff should a customer decide to generously contribute. Very few I think. Freeloaders would abound.
In a socialist system, subscribers would have a say, a vote, over what content LWN would carry, its tyle etc. In a capitalist system they would merely stop subscibing if it didn't carry what they want.
If a subscription based LWN is to be successful, I believe it needs to be open to the community about roughly what its costs are, roughly how much it is making from subscriptions, donations etc. and where that money is going.
I think most people will be much happier paying a subscription if they understand that it is going to cover a reasonable wage, healthcare and pension for the LWN team members who produce the great content that IS LWN, rather than to line some fat cats or shareholders pockets.
As for not attracting potential new readers if a subscription system is imposed, It needs to be remembered that non-subscribers won't be cut off from all content as many other sites do, merely prevented from acessing the most recent stuff if the most popular options(s) are followed. They can clearly see what the site is about, what its standards, attitudes and quality are. They have a choice to either pay for the most up to date stuff, or be patient.
As for levels of subscription, perhaps LWN should offer various lengths of subscription, say annual, quarterly, monthly and one-off, with up front or monthly payment options. The longer term ones should be cheaper per issue then the shorter ones since this will allow LWN to plan more for the future knowing that they have longer term support, and encourage people to subscribe for a longer period.
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