Where has the pioneer spirit of LWN gone? [LWN.net]

From:		"Thomas Wardman" <wardtj@hoser.ca>
To:		<letters@lwn.net>
Subject:		Where has the pioneer spirit of LWN gone?
Date:		Thu, 1 Aug 2002 02:23:42 -0400

To the LWN Editors,

Let me first thank you folks for the last 4 years of LWN.  I remember
back in 1998, when the very first edition of LWN came out.  One of my
coworkers said to me, "Hey, there's a new Linux site out and it seems
pretty neat."  He was right.  LWN was exactly what the Linux community
needed.  A place where all of the daily and weekly happenings could be
brought together in one place.  I remember fondly the times of waiting
patiently for Wednesdays to come.  It was one of those things I used to
treat myself with when I had a busy day on the job.  I'd happily take my
break by reading the LWN.

However, now, it would appear things have changed a little with the
online e-mag I enjoyed reading.  Now, the question of the viability
comes into question.  Is this a sign of the times?  Where have all the
online pioneers gone?  Remember when LWN was that little site back in
1998?  Did it require 5 full time people writing it up?  Did it require
$15K US/mo to fund?  Certainly the economics are not the same as 1998,
but has it really changed all that much?  The best analogy I can think
of to describe the LWN situation, goes something like this,

	"Mom and Dad send off there best pride and joy to
University/College for the first time.  This is the first time that the
pride of the family has been on his/her own.  Things go well for the
first semester, as the boy/girl works hard to impress the family.  

	"There is much dedication, simply because the family counts on
this performance.  After a while, the pride of the family now discovers
the rest of the University/College world, the joys of credit cards and
other ills.  So, the boy/girl takes one of those credit cards, and
starts to build up the dorm room.  It is now plush, nice, essentially
the same thing, just spruced up a bit with the latest Ikea(tm) and Pier
One(tm) fashions.  

	"The bills start to arrive.  At first, the loan money and things
given as gifts by mom and dad cover the bills, but after a while he/she
realizes that the bills cannot be paid so a job is needed.  After
working at the job, the bills still increase as pride of the family
continues to buy even with the influx of new cash.  Great looking car,
nice dorm room.

	"Now, the pride of the family is in big trouble, having to work
40 hours a week to cover the bills and do 40 hours of classes, burn out
happens.  At the end, the pride of the family must now call mom and dad
and ask for help, or he/she is out of school."  

The end of that analogy is where I believe LWN is today.  In the
beginning, it was new, it was fun and community needed you.  The yearly
Linux Timeline, that was truly a classic.  You could actually see Linux
grow just be following the years events on LWN.  Now it would seem, LWN
is at that "gotta ask mom and dad or I'm gonna quit" stage of
development.

Again I ask, what happened to that pioneering spirit?  Why does the site
need $15K US/month to run?  The LWN justification is,
	"$25,000 is a nice pile of cash for a little company to have in
the bank, but it is important to keep in mind that it is not enough to
keep us going for all that long. Running LWN currently involves five
people (Jonathan Corbet: front and Kernel pages, site code, "executive
editor"; Forrest Cook: Development and Press pages, system
administration; Rebecca Sobol: Distributions and Commerce pages; Dennis
Tenney: Security page and corporate bureaucracy; Dave Whitinger:
business development, ad sales and delivery), all of whom are
experienced software engineers. These people have children and
mortgages, and most work full time producing LWN. They can not be
expected to do it for free, even though that is exactly what they have
been doing for some months now." (http://lwn.net/Articles/5712/, August
1/02)
I do feel a tad insulted by this comment.  The LWN community is almost
arrogantly shrugged off, a very "thanks for all the fish" attitude.  If
a CEO of a company justified a 30% raise when the rest of the company
took a 5% roll-back using this logic, there would be some serious
backlash.  Just because your all brilliant software engineers does not
mean the community needs to shoulder your habits.  If the five LWN
editors took full time jobs working as experienced software engineers
and did LWN as a hobby/not-for-profit out of their own expenses, then
donations are justified.
Why would LWN cost more to produce than Kuro5hin.org?  $70K/yr US vs.
$180k/yr?  I do have a hard time understanding the economics of LWN with
the current rational used.  Why cannot some of this work be outsourced
to the community you have built?  Zack Jones already provides a very
good Kernel summary (http://kt.zork.net).  I am sure the rest of the
site could be parted out that same way, where the LWN editors give the
news there own kind of spin.  Why not work to share your workload?  Why
not turn LWN back into the pioneering site it was?
It would appear the problems are solely related to manpower and
compensating individuals for the "pro bono" work they have in the past.
How did LWN do this back in 1998?  Surely the system administration
cannot be *that* much work?  Why was the new site written from scratch?
It may be impressive to say "Hey, I can write code in Perl and Python",
but why waste so many hours of time on it, when there are many other
viable Open Source solutions.  PHPNuke?  PostNuke?  Why redo the entire
site about one month before you decide to close shop?  Did the LWN
editors know that closing the site would have been a topic of
conversation back in June of this year?  Did this just spring up?  I
surely doubt this.
What truly saddened me, is when the LWN editors decided to slip in there
"closing" as the third article on the July 25, 2002 front-page.  Instead
of being upfront and honest about the problems, it's more of a sad,
"hey, where gone, so long" type situation.  Instead of using the
community to their advantage, LWN decided to say "good bye so long."
That is totally within the prerogative of any editor or business to
close up shop.  However I do contend it was the wrong way to go about
this.
I honestly do hope LWN survives this current situation.  However for it
do so will require all of LWN to return to its roots and definitely not
cost $180K/yr US to do.  That is life folks.  Do it because you love it,
not because it is a chore.  Please accept the fact that LWN has become
more than that little online e-mag you pioneered back in 1998.
In closing, I would just like to say that Mandrake started a very bad
precedent by going the "donate to save us" route.  The same Mandrake
die-hards who donated are the same ones who probably never bought
Mandrake at their local electronics shop.  Granted, LWN is in a
different style of situation, but kicking the community that helped
build you up is really quite sad.  This new kind of "Open Source
Philanthropy" just proves that money and greed will win every time over
good hard work and the fun of just doing it, just because you can.
--Thomas

Thomas Wardman
@Hoser.ca -- Get it eh?

(Log in to post comments)

spoilt brat syndrome

Posted Aug 8, 2002 5:16 UTC (Thu) by ringerc (subscriber, #3071) [Link]

The key difference is that LWN is edited and written at professional quality across the board. I don't know about you but I'm never going to ask somebody to do that and spend that much time, for free. I'm certainly never going to get stroppy about if they don't. Sure, if somebody does thats wonderful - but just because there are people (think KT by Zack Brown as just one of many) who will doesn't give anybody the right to ask, let alone demand, it.

Just because its been free so far and that's what you've become used to doesn't mean it _must_ stay that way. Its the choice of those running LWN, and they've said that the current model doesn't work.

Sometimes I wonder why people are still willing to deal with the "Open source community," given that we seem to have such a vocal and offensive component to whom everything must be free (beer) just because they believe thats the way the world should work. Its a model thats worked well for software, though even then I am amazed at some people's willingness to demand that something be open-sourced "because proprietary software is wrong." People write OSS software because they choose to and want to - don't confuse that with a moral/ethical _requirement_ to do so.

This comment probably reads like a flame - it isn't really meant to be but I don't mind if I convey a _lot_ of irritation about the attitudes expressed in the letter.

So, thanks all you guys at LWN, for the hard work esp in such difficult times. I hope it works out and I, for one, will gladly subscribe, and I support your choice to try to make lwn less of an "on-the-edge" affair.

So we should expect everything to be free?

Posted Aug 8, 2002 7:19 UTC (Thu) by athird (guest, #1052) [Link]

You don't see a contradiction in the following two statements?

"It would appear the problems are solely related to manpower and
compensating individuals for the "pro bono" work they have in the past.
How did LWN do this back in 1998?"

"Please accept the fact that LWN has become
more than that little online e-mag you pioneered back in 1998."

It *has* become more than it was in 1998, which answers your own question about the increased costs. As I've seen lots of people say since all of this came out, professional quality journalism is worth paying for, and I fully intend to subscribe when that option becomes available.

Your comparison with the Mandrake Club also seems to miss the point. Yes, those who donate to Mandrake probably are those who never bought a boxed set in the past. That's actually what Mandrake want. When someone buys a boxed set, how much of the money do Mandrake actually get, and how much goes on packaging, shipping, manufacture, etc.? The profit margin isn't very large, and each user needs to buy the boxed set of *every* version in order to keep up Mandrake's income. Far better, for both user and company, if you can pay about $5 a month, or whatever, knowing that pretty much all of that is going straight to them.

Too many people have complained about companies "trying to turn themselves into charities", without realising that mechanisms such as LWN subscriptions and the Mandrake Club are *not* donations. They're payment systems, to allow us to reimburse companies who provide a service to us.

spoilt brat syndrome

Posted Aug 8, 2002 15:13 UTC (Thu) by mogul (subscriber, #3163) [Link]

I completely agree with this comment. I'm stunned that the writer of this letter believes that the LWN staff are being greedy, and his suggestion that they do it "for the love of it" shows that he does not understand that that is the situation *right now* and has been for a long time. I'm disappointed to think that this might be indicative of the typical feedback LWN receives.

I challenge Thomas Wardman to show us all just how cheap all this should be by tossing PostNuke up on some hosted webspace, and instantly creating the most thorough and thoughtful Linux coverage on the web. It shouldn't cost him anything, right?

LWN is the highlight of my week, and reading it gives me confidence that I'm fully aware of what's going on in the Open Source world... The only other way to satisfy that gnawing, constant hunger to keep up with and understand *everything* would be to spend all my waking hours surfing and cogitating. I know that I couldn't afford to live if that's all I had time for each day. I know how valuable my time is, and I'm thankful that others are doing the heavy lifting for me. This service (and that's what it is in the end) isn't something that should be free.

Count my vote in the subscription camp. I will happily pay magazine-level rates to continue to receive such high quality Linux coverage.

(As a suggestion, the LWN editors might try speaking with Randy Cassingham, author of the This Is True and Heroic Stories mailing lists: http://www.thisistrue.com. Randy faced the same problems when his popular free mailing list outgrew his ability to support himself. Eventually a very reader-friendly subscription system was created and he is now solvent. He travels to lecture about his experience as a successful online entrepeneur in the syndication realm.)

Where has the pioneer spirit of LWN gone?

Posted Aug 8, 2002 7:06 UTC (Thu) by eyal (subscriber, #949) [Link]

Thomas,

Behind your criticism of LWN financials, is the question why it takes 5 people full-time to write LWN.

I don't know what is your field of expertise, but I'm sure you can find a complicated issue in that field. Now try to write an 1-2 page article about this issue, but an article that eveyone can understand.

Make sure your language is clear. Make sure there are no spelling mistakes. Make sure you've provided enough background to put the article in the right context and perspective.

Finished? Not yet. Let someone else read the article and ask for comments. You'll probably need to re-write portions of the article.

You'll spend about a full working day to produce just 1-2 pages of quality text. That's just the writing. Now consider all the reading that LWN people have to do. Consider they need to travel to conferences or other events.

If you'll take all this into account, you'll find out that running a quality magazine & news-feed costs quite a lot. The key word here is QUALITY. A hobbyist can't produce this quality in his or her spare time.

Most LWN readers want, maybe even need this quality, and are willing to pay for it. We the readers have offered our money, rather than LWN asking for money. The Free spirit at its best.

Eyal Zvi.

The pioneers are settling down---they want to live here

Posted Aug 8, 2002 16:45 UTC (Thu) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

Dear Mr. Wardman:

Let me suggest a different slant on the situation.

What impels you to spend money to subscribe to a magazine?
It's not the paper---cheaper and more useful can be had at your local stationers.
It's not the words---those can be found wholesale in a dictionary.
It's not the discussion---Usenet is full of it.
It's not the ads (barring, say, The Computer Shopper :-).

It's the editing.

You pay because an intelligent, well-written person, whose interests parallel some of yours, has spent their time:

searching for news,
sorting out the trash,
writing up the remainder in clear, informed, grammatical prose, and
organizing the result so you can easily find the pieces you want.

All so you needn't.

LWN's editors do that in spades. Their awareness of the Linux world is wide-ranging; their selections are interesting and, frequently, important; their writing is simply unmatched on the Internet, and is better than all but the highest-quality magazines (New York Times, hang your head), and the layout is great.

So, you want this from someone's spare time?

We pay to get good editors in other media, and unless we wise up and start doing so online, we won't have any. Paying for LWN is paying for the best---if we can't do so, we're a truly sorry lot.

Thanks, all of you editors. You do an incredible job, and deserve to be able to live a normal life while doing it.

Best wishes,
Max Hyre

[None of the foregoing is mitigated by the fact that the editors in most periodicals are paid by the advertisers: you pay the magazine's price, however little it covers of the full cost, for the editing.]

Real Money....

Posted Aug 9, 2002 5:10 UTC (Fri) by Kuric (guest, #3176) [Link]

I'm not the smartest person in the world but I run my own business
and I did some quick figuring it may not be 100 percent accurate
but I know that I'm somewhere close to the ballpark here..

If each person makes about $600/Week (gross) = 3,000/week = 12,000 Month
(If you take out taxes then you can figure that each person takes
home around 480/week) ( 600/week equates out to $31,200 / year)

5 people and families health insurance = 250/ea = 1,250 Month
(This is assuming that the company pays for it)

SSI Taxes paid buy the company 46/each = 230 /week = 920 / month

So far 12000 + 1250 + 920 = 14170 (pretty damn close to 15k per month)

This also does not take into account Utilities, Heat/AC, Phone, Internet Access, and bandwidth for the servers that LWN is run on, or if LWN is hosted then hosting costs...

Just some thoughts...

Editors: I've not been an avid reader of your site thus far but I'll
probably be a much more frequent viewer.... Thanks for giving so
much to the community... Many here do appreciate what it takes to
do a quality job professionally full-time...

-Mike Dollbaum

Right.

Posted Aug 9, 2002 19:17 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

"...but I asked why their costs were such a Big Deal ( http://lwn.net/Articles/6621/ ) when they could take a day job and leave their hobby as a hobby (which paid well)."

A 40-60 hour/week "hobby" (which does not pay well) is rather hard on one's family, health, and general well being. This is the kind of comment that, frankly, makes me want to throw up my hands, go do something that people actually value, and let the "hobby" folks show us all how it's done. If an LWN subscription is not worth your paying for it, then, by all means, do not pay. But if our readers do not value LWN enough to pay for it, we'll go and find something to do that people do value, and the arrogance of those who think we should work for free, move to another country, or whatever just so they can continue to get a free LWN will not slow us down.

(We would be deeply unhappy about disappointing the large number of our readers who have been so supportive and understanding through this whole thing).

-- jon (whose "hobby" is making him a little grumpy about now...)

Right.

Posted Aug 9, 2002 23:26 UTC (Fri) by barbara (subscriber, #3014) [Link]

Jon,

I can see why this type of response would make you want to pack it in and do something else.

However, I'm sure this isn't the attitude of the vast majority of LWN readers (like 99%!). Please hang in there -- we're pulling for all of you and we don't expect you to work 40-60 (or more) hours/week with *no* income.

All the best,
Barbara

So don't work on it so much.

Posted Aug 16, 2002 5:50 UTC (Fri) by Inoshiro (guest, #3070) [Link]

A hobby should be an act of love, not a means of staying alive.

I'm asking why the editors can't do it for 10-20 hours a week, at their leisure, and still not reap the benefits of participation in the community *without* being forced to deal with all the money issues that LWN says it's facing.

No one has yet answered why, until LWN can actually live off of its subscription money (as I'm sure we'd all like to see it do), you people behind it can't "go native" for a while and work a normal 9-5 while doing this on your slow Sunday nights.