LWN.net Closing Down

Anonymous Coward writes "The best Linux news site is calling it a day. Citing money problems, they are saying next weeks issue will be the last. I've been reading LWN.net since the very beginning. They have always demonstrated sanity, restraint and professionalism along with thoughtful commentary - unlike certain other well known Linux news sites. Very sad." They've had problems since last fall. It's been a good four year run for them.

When does Slashdot follow?

[MisterBlister]

This honestly isn't a troll. I'm just wondering how viable Slashdot is for the near future? Considering the well known "Slashdot" effect, they must pay a bundle on bandwidth charges each month, and 90% of the ads on the site seem to be for other OSDN sites, so I don't think they're pulling in any money there. I know they have subscriptions, but have THAT many people really signed up for them? How long until Slashdot is gone or goes a bit-more subscription based (ala Salon)? Anyone willing to make some public guesses?

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Surak]

Not too long before anything with decent content goes subscription based (excluding volunteer-run sites perhaps), except for the academic stuff, but then again, some universities have decided to restrict access to the 'good' content to behind the campus firewall, leaving just course descriptions and such publically accessible.

Gone from the future, and the past....

[zapp]

The sad thing about the Internet, is not necessarily that when a site shuts down it stops putting up new content, but in many cases the archived information on the site disappears.

Yes I know about the Internet archiving effort (www.archive.org), but in many cases the sites going under had streaming video or audio, which is lost forever.

Re:Hmm...

[SlugLord]

It's always good to see the real human beings who understand that all news reporting comes with a slant, and that some (though surely not Slashdot) is more biased than others.

I read everything here with a suspicious eye, though I think that some of the most suspicious (of government and big companies anyway) persons are probably trusting of Slashdot in its ability to provide knowledgeable, minimally-biased news.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[sh0rtie]

Speaking as a experienced webdeveloper they could cut the bandwidth usage here at least in half by using stylesheets,removing whitespace in the source,and adhering to w3c [w3c.org] standards in the html code , it would be quite trivial to convert and the time spent would == cash saved for the effort (and it would still work in lynx:)

we are always bashing people about standards , so why dont we take a leaf out of our own book and make this site/code/browsers use the technology available to us ?, it is 2002 after all not 1992.

heh or is it another case of "do as i say not as i do" ?

It will be missed...

[ninjaz]

This is a sad day for me. I've been reading LWN since it started, and they have always had excellent reporting and editorial content.

Their long memories, digging deep enough to get at the meat of the stories and excellent security coverage for Linux & *BSD will be sorely missed.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[Graymalkin]

How would slashdot charge a Salon style subscription fee? They don't own the comments posted nor the stories posted unless they're articles written by one of the editors which rarely happens. No one is going to pay to read Jon fucking Katz.

Salon actually produced content which they owned and could charge money for. Unless Rob and crew hire active posters to say shit about the article and get them to sign over rights to the work they couldn't sell shit. The subscription system as is is more of a tip jar than true subscription. Rob hiring members is not very likely considering his low opinion of the comments on the site.

If VA was going to go Chapter 7 they'd unload OSDN on the first company that would have them. Even though Linux is 80% hype a big name would still loave to have OSDN in the fold. VA gets scads of free advertising and just plain mindshare by owning OSDN. Slashdot and the other "news" sites handle the Linux hype machine for the OSDN sites while the real work gets done in Development and Media sites with complimentary stuff being sold through ThinkGeek. Anyone with even a remote interest in Linux would want OSDN's portfolio. I don't see slashdot tanking any time soon.

good point

[Frothy Walrus]

This is a good point. The Editors have not said boo lately about subscriptions -- I bet you a dollar that means they didn't get jack. Please read on before modding me.

Mr Malda can take this as a lesson. Rusty from k5 [kuro5hin.org] rustled up about $35,000 by passing the hat around, and at last count Slashdot had collected about 1/10 that, for offering "premium" service. It goes to show, if you treat your users with respect to the point of fanaticism, they will hold you in high regard with similar vigor. If you irritate 50% of them at any given time, you get it right back.

It looks like the Internet Age is heading towards dusk for VA; it's spent well over a month under $1 and will most likely be delisted when things in the stock market loosen up a bit.

Can Slashdot go free again? Without a change in leadership, I'm not so sure.

No free publishing

[YahoKa]

The simple fact of e-publishing is that it costs money. You can't publish a book wihout people buying them, and likewise you cant publish a web page without getting money from somewhere. We now know that most web advertising is a flop, so subscriptions seem unavoidable. But if i read 10 news sites a day, i dont want to pay even $4 for each one because that sure adds up. If you can think of a solution please let me know, cus there is money to be made there.

Re:When does Slashdot follow?

[nemesisj]

Another option would be to enable gzip compression on Apache. That would save probably 3/4 of the bandwidth they use, which is a huge immediate savings money-wise, and would greatly decrease load times.

Re:Thats too bad

[Rebel Patriot]

The problem, if you read the article, isn't lack of money to buy bandwidth, but rather lack of money to pay writers. Just like salon.com, lwn.net has writers that want money. They haven't been paid for awhile, and so isntead of going WAY in debt, they're folding before the ship completely sinks.

A moment...

[Lac]

I am deeply saddened by this loss. I will truly miss them. LWN did something no other Linux site was doing. LWN will not be replaced any time soon. LWN... was important, perhaps the most important Linux news site.

I have been known to post over-the-top comments [slashdot.org] here because I believe that Slashdot shouldn't [slashdot.org] take itself too seriously. But I will not rant in this thread or make funny remarks. Now is not the time for wit. Now is not the time for "Funny, +5" comments. Now is not even the time for moderation.

I would like to propose a moment of silence. I know, Slashdot is just a weblog. I know, I am almost taking this forum seriously. But face it, the LWN editors have earned it and this is as good as it's gonna get. Take a minute. You can always read the funny comments tomorrow.

Re:Here's the Situation as I see it...

[Rebel Patriot]

When did Linux suddenly spawn this goal to eliminate Microsoft? I'm glad I wasn't around to see it. I always thought Linux was a kernel, and GNU/Linux distros were cool things geeks played with. Linux was successful before Redhat and before SuSE. It was successful and fun before Mandrake and before lwn.net. It will survive simply because it is open source. You can't kill it, so why does it need to compete with Microsoft?

You don't like MS, fine... I don't either. But please, please don't use Linux as a weapon against MS because you don't like MS. Use Linux because you like Linux.

Sad....

[Goonie]

Although occasionally LWN made wrong calls on things (name a news outlet that doesn't), their quality writing and analysis will be missed.

I suppose I should have supported their site with some cash, but there's only so many sites one can subscribe to with limited resources (I'm a subscriber at Salon and Crikey.com.au, amongst others).

Hopefully one day the web ad market will come back just a teency bit to help support good sites like LWN.

Re:A moment...

[Anonymous Cowrad]

I am deeply saddened by this loss.

I don't even know where to begin. You're deeply saddened? Are you serious, man? Yeah, it sure is a bitch that LWN is closing, but don't you think you're being a bit melodramatic?

Jesus christ. You need to get out more often if a website shutting down is a life-shattering event.

Get together

[raarts]

I would be happy to pay for a LWN subscription, but I don't. Why? Because I'm afraid I'll eventually pay a similar amount for every online publication I want to read and that would stack up too much for me.
But basically I wouldn't mind paying for the fact I'm an Open Source fan.

My solution: Get together with similar publications (Linuxtoday? Slashdot? Freshmeat? rpmfind? MozillaZine? Apache Week?) Charge a fee as a group. Create a free, outdated (four weeks) version of the sites to show what you're offering. Don't get overboard on the rates. Create student rates. Make it very easy to sign up, and easy for us non-US citizens to transfer the money.

I would personally pay $15 a month for a combined subscription. My company would pay more.

Why LWN was unique

[vondo]

The best thing about LWN from my perspective was that they would actually take some time to analyze the news themselves. It's easy to put together a site that is just a collection of news stories. It takes a lot more effort to try to explain to your readers what the news means. For instance, their kernel coverage was fantastic for someone like me who doesn't really understand the kernel at more than a superficial level.

Second, LWN was unabashedly pro-Linux, not anti-commercial-software. They really took more of an OSI like attitude: Open-source is great, here's why, but we realize and accept that some companies won't do it, and they make useful software too.

Finally, LWN rarely required you to visit another page on their site to get to the article they were linking too. Linuxtoday does this and it annoys me to no end. On the front page LT quotes the first paragraph of the story, on the next page the first 3 paragraphs. Only from there can you go to the actual article.