Thomas Warden's letter

This is in response to Thomas Wardman's letter on August 1.  That letter
was evidently written by an outsider trying to understand why LWN needs
what it claims it needs in order to continue.  I am in a similar
situation, and write this letter from a similar uninformed position.  My
opinions, however, are quite different.

I don't know if Mr. Wardman has ever run a volunteer website for any
length of time, but unless the maintenance on a site you run is
relatively lightweight, or it is part of one of your significant hobbies
and quite different from what you do at work, burnout is a significant
issue.  What is fun to do gratis for a few months after a while becomes
one more thing that you have to get done.  It becomes one more drain on
your time.  I know, I have experience with this.  A friend and I run
www.dramex.org, and have since 1994.  The maintenance of that site
really does not take much time at all, certainly much less than what
goes into LWN.net.  Theatre is one of my great loves, and it is indeed
quite different from what I do at work.  And, yet, we still frequently
manage to get months (and in two cases, years) behind on maintaining the
site.

Consider the simple economics of the matter, from two points of view.
First, the people who run LWN.net *can* get jobs somewhere else, doing
similar things, that pay, leaving them without the time (or,
significantly, the energy) to do the same sort of thing gratis for
LWN.net.  Second, there are jobs out there doing things similar to what
must be done LWN.net, jobs that pay.  (It sounds like the same thing
stated twice, but there are two points: the people could get jobs, and
the things the people are doing are very similar to what other people
are paid for.)  Given that, it just doesn't make economic sense for
LWN.net to be maintained at its current level completely gratis by a
small number of people.

Mr. Wardman compares LWN.net to Kuro5shin.org, wondering why LWN.net
would require more money than k5 to maintain.  I hear this comparison
often, or a comparison between LWN.net and slashdot.  I don't understand
it.  Yes, K5 takes time to maintain.  However, it is a very different
site from LWN.net.  It is a community contribution site, and most of
what you see written on the front page are written by the readers.
Rusty, the maintainer of the site, is there to keep it running; it's a
real job, yes, but he's not *writing* the most important text for site,
and can keep it up as one (full-time) person.  LWN.net is much more akin
to a traditional magazine.  Yes, a lot of it is finding and culling
material from the web, but there are also insightful editorials, and
there is a sane, clear, intelligent "voice".  You wouldn't expect the
editors of Linux Journal to edit the magazine as a hobby, charging
subscribers only what is necessary for the direct physical costs of
printing.  It would be insane; they would go edit another magazine where
they would get paid, leaving them with money to eat and time for a life.
Similarly, you can't demand that LWN.net maintain their level of
excellence simply because we as a community are entitled to their
donation of time.

I have long scratched my head as to why slashdot.org every year wins the
"best Linux website" readers' choice award from Linux Jounral.  Sure, I
like Slashdot-- but if you're talking *Linux* news, LWN.net is far, far
superior.  The signal to noise is tremendously higher, the editorial
"voice" is more consistent, more mature, more clearheaded, and better
written.  Slashdot's value comes in collecting nerd stories from the net
and the discussion.  LWN.net collects Linux stories from the net-- but
does much more than that.  It organizes and comments on that, and
provides clear, cogent summaries and discussions of some of the most
important trends and issues (including the all-important "intellectual
property" issues which are every bit as key to the continued health of
Linux as technical kernel issues).

Does LWN.net really need five full-time people?  I don't know, I'm not
there.  But I do know that it is vaguely insulting to demand (even if
only by implication) that they should continue what they are doing
completely on a volunteer basis, and like it.  Mr. Wardman is right in
saying that the Linux community shouldn't have to shoulder the habits of
the LWN.net employees simply because they are all brilliant software
engineers.  On the other hand, he is very wrong to imply that the Linux
community should expect LWN.net to continue to exist in a form and
quality approaching it's current state if they aren't willing to
"shoulder the habits" of those who maintain it.  The connection he fails
to make is that not shouldering the burdern means not having LWN.net.
If he really believes that a site as good as LWN.net could be run on a
volunteer basis: I invite him to do so.

-Rob Knop
rknop@pobox.com