Tux Magazine editor is a Linspire mouthpiece
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick2 Jun 05, 2006 11:01 AM EDT |
I read this article, then opened the new Tux Magazine, and you'll never guess what it contains- the editor publishes a glowing Linspire puff piece, and proudly announces his membership on the Freespire advisory board. http://www.tuxmagazine.com/node/1000198, free registration required, see "Linspire Embraces the Open Source Community with a Proprietary Solution Twist by Kevin Shockey." So much for editorial independence, and everything that SSC has stood for all these years. 'The Danger of Appealing with Proprietary Software" is a very timely piece. First the idiotic Mango Parfait, now this. I'll bet money Mango Parfait is a man. |
| Inhibit Jun 05, 2006 12:08 PM EDT |
FTA: "I am of the belief that it is unethical to restrict people access to the source code of a program, and specially restrict its use for anything, or to modify it, or share it. Software in principle should be collectively owned. Anything that restricts this is simply evil." Seems a little more, ah, vitriolic than any other Free software stumping I've read. Even Stallmans. And I've always considered him the standard bearer for FS, even if I don't agree with his position at times. Kinda throws the whole breakdown out of perspective for me. Copyright in general restricts all of those. Even GPL copyright. It says that I can and can't do things with the software. I don't think it makes software "collectively owned" or allow "it's use for anything", specifically. Tuxchick, got to agree with you on the idea that there should be some seperation of the press from what we report on. Writing a glowing review of something and announcing that they've made you part of the board... kinda tough to see that as being uninfluenced by the reviewed, even if it's not. |
| tuxchick2 Jun 05, 2006 12:15 PM EDT |
Inhibit, you are right, those are strong words. Calling proprietary software evil is way over the top. I'm disappointed with the direction SSC has been taking the past few years. First there was that whole Linux Gazette debacle, Linux Journal has become nearly irrelevant, and now Tux Magazine is drinking the "proprietary stuff is cool" beverage. |
| dcparris Jun 05, 2006 12:46 PM EDT |
> Software in principle should be collectively owned. Yeah. That's incorrect - the GPL would lose its force without its dependence on the proprietary nature of copyright. It's also the reason I tend to use the term "non-free" instead of "proprietary" when referring to that class of software. However, I also view non-free software as unethical. If I had released CHADDB under a non-free license, people would be dependent upon me to do something more with it than I have. Boy would they be in for a big disappointment! That's the thing. Microsoft isn't much better than I am in that regard. Neither are many other non-free software developers - their users get stuck with a bag of tricks they can't do much with, other than use. I just think it's wrong to do that to people. tc: What was the debacle with Linux Gazette? I apparently missed that. |
| tuxchick2 Jun 05, 2006 2:52 PM EDT |
Wikipedia has a pretty good summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Gazette Linuxgazette.com silently disappeared about a year ago, so once again the True Linux Gazette rulez. Linuxgazette.com was pretty awful anyway. They were using some CMS system (Drupal?) that didn't control formatting very well, so some pages required horizontal scrolling. The articles were mostly low-quality, though there were some gems from time to time. The archives are gone, except for http://web.archive.org, which is a slap in the face to all their volunteer authors. They had an ugly habit of censoring reader feedback. I recall one hapless editor who arrived with much fanfare, yay we're going to have fun, everyone give feedback! So lots of people did. He felt rather ambushed, I guess the poor lad didn't do his homework and had no idea how many ticked-off Linux Gazette fans there were. So instead of accepting it, after all he did ask for it, reader comments were tightly restricted and a lot of posts were deleted. They also did some ugly things to the original Linux Gazette archives, posting them on linuxgazette.com as though they had a right to, and they stripped off the author's names. Rick Moen's article http://linuxgazette.net/issue97/moen.html is a good writeup on what happened. |
| dcparris Jun 05, 2006 3:17 PM EDT |
Thanks! |
| pat Jun 06, 2006 5:53 AM EDT |
Formating is a function of html and the browser, not the CMS TuxChick2. BTW, I decided against resubscribing to LJ for various reasons including, to many requests to re-subscribe, not able to re-subscribe at the previous subscribers rate on-line, the new editor is obnoxious (and so am I at times), and the new format is not earth friendly (wastes paper). |
| Inhibit Jun 09, 2006 12:50 PM EDT |
Eh. I just found it redundant news wise and let the LJ subscription drop. Most pulpers are to me these days since I'm posting news on PCBurn. *Weeks* old even! Although they did have a bit of good programming stuff. But it was too overly specific to do me any good. Tuxchick2: good link on the LG story. I had kinda wondered what happened there. I'm curious if they had the right to remove the writers name under the license.. even if so, that's still pretty poor form. |
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