OSNews

Opinion can either come from your mouth, or your rear.
In that sense, one can opinion about the future of computing in a constructive sense (attitude is the application of personality), or you can bitch, whine and complain.

Kroc summed it up pretty well. If you back up your thoughts and ideas with research, then it's reporting. If you're just pulling it out of your ass, then it's an opinion piece. Some people can pull really good ideas out of their asses, though. That's why I said I'd "discourage" opinion pieces, not that they wouldn't be considered.

Nevertheless, you bring up a valid question, and thanks for giving me the chance to clarify.

Edited 2008-04-18 20:24 UTC

Yeah, but those usually stink...

Sorry, I couldn't resist... I'll fall back to serious-mode from now on.

Please read the article! If you contribute a story, you will get high quality merchandise like key rings, ballpens, ... ;-)

He'll probably need to learn how to spell "possible" first, though.

Yup, you keep on believing that. Have fun.

Isn't that the motto of most Open Source companies out there? (except all of those who fail at the 'make the money' part)

Yeah well someone has to pay for my 58 room mansion, 12 cars, and our private company yet. Oh, and we own a island off the coast of Brazil.

I feel a door comic strip approaching...

This topic comes up with reasonable frequency. Have you thought about publishing some sort of financial statements? Nothing of GAAP quality required. Just some basic "we got this much from advertising, this much from subscriptions, and this much of it went for web hosting and bandwidth, this much went to something else, and we have a balance of $x.xx.

Hear, hear! Then we'd redistribute profits among users!

I was thinking more along the lines of factoring this particular information out to a separate page that we can just link to when the topic comes up again. And you know that it will... repeatedly.

That said, I'm not sure I'd call it stupidity, out of hand.

Are you saying that the money from advertising and subscriptions exactly balances the expenses? If so, that's quite remarkable. I'd have thought that they wouldn't happen to be exactly equal. If you guys are supplementing OSNews out of your own pockets, step forward and receive due credit. If OSNews has a positive cashflow and staff are getting compensated for their work, be honest about it. Otherwise, it just makes it appear that you have something to hide. A simple periodic statement would avoid that whole issue.

Edited 2008-04-19 17:08 UTC

I don't see why the state of the OSNews books should be public knowledge? They are after all a privately held organization and their financial status should be their own business.

I did not say that they *should* be. I said that it might save some repetitive efforts by staff in the long run to simply publish the facts from time to time. Thom has repeatedly had to come out and say that OSNews is an entirely volunteer effort and that no one gets paid. So it certainly does not sound like it would involve publishing sensitive information.

>If OSNews has a positive cashflow and staff are getting
>compensated for their work, be honest about it.

We have been honest about it since 2001: NO editor on OSNews was ever on a payroll. But there is a pricey server/hosting and an administrator who gets compensated to keep everything up and running.

True - there are plenty of people here who treat their own uninformed assumptions as sacrosanct, but that doesn't give anyone else an obligation to disabuse people of those assumptions.

Some people would argue that asking for donations to a for-profit entity is pretty stupid.

If you're "in the red", post about it and I'm sure no one would have a problem donating original articles.

If you're "in the black", you should really be paying for original content like everyone else in the publishing world does.

So, you're calling Adam, Eugenia, and myself stupid. We all donate our free time to OSNews. I can only speak for myself, but I donate a few hours a day to OSNews, besides my university study, job, and social life. I don't ask anything in return for that because I enjoy doing it, and because the subject matter interests me. OSNews allows me to learn more about computing and journalism - the two terms that will play a central role in my future.

The fact you read that what you call stupid is... Well, weird.



It doesn't seem to bother the countless people who already submitted their originals this weekend - about 5 or 6.

Right here is as good a place as any to announce that we intend for this contest to be a recruitment tool to find writers that we hope we can bring on to do regular writing for OSNews. And those people who we do bring on to do writing on an ongoing basis will be compensated at a rate in line with what web sites like OSNews pay.

That being said...

People contribute content to web sites all day long without expecting compensation. How much do you get for recommending a site to digg? Digg wouldn't exist if people didn't do their work for them. How much do you expect to be paid for writing the comment you just wrote? The comments on OSNews are a big part of our content. Making a call for submissions is not the same as asking for donations. OSNews has never asked people to donate money. People who contribute their time and energy have done so in exchange for fame.

99% of the bloggers out there, if they make any money at all, don't make enough to fairly compensate them for their time. Why do they do it? It's gratifying to be able to have a say, and it feeds our spirits to know that other people are reading what we say. It's a natural human desire. Small-time bloggers are often frustrated, though, because they know that their missives aren't being widely read. They wish more people were reading, because then their blog would have more meaning.

People contribute to OSNews because it allows them to have a prominent stage on which to showcase their talents. It's like setting up a blog and having a hundred thousand people read it the next day. And it's not just random people, but fellow OS enthusiasts. Do you want to be able to have your say? Submit something to OSNews.

There are very few online news sites that make enough money from advertising that they can afford full-time writing staff. Thankfully, OSNews does finally make enough money that it can afford to pay contributors of feature-length original articles. But still, I doubt anyone is going to be in it for the money. If you're looking to strike it rich, I don't recommend a career in writing for niche-oriented tech news websites. If you're looking to be a big fish in a small pond, and get your voice heard, however, come on down!

Can't expect us to cater to stupidity. "

Yes, that's true.
And perhaps you are right, if you give "the others" the priority to be stupid.

Just out of curiosity... what do you think is the current value of this site (osnews.com). (let's assume that you would like to sell it)

Not sure about today's value. But back in 1999, I'd say maybe a billion dollars or so, assuming that the webservers run on Linux.

30hrs 44 minutes

...since Sbergman27 had an original thought...

I can see your point. However, to extend your analogy, I'd say that this is like a "pick your favorite thing ever" contest wherein we will judge it on a common standard, for example, usefulness or beauty.

We'll be judging these articles on a pretty simple (though certainly subjective) set of criteria: interestingness, quality of research, appropriateness or topicality with the OSNews mission, and overall technical quality of the writing. A longer article may gain points for research, but if it's too rambling, it will lose points for interestingness or writing quality.

Last time we did a contest we restricted the topic a bit more. I wanted to give people a freer hand this time. We'll see how it turns out.

All articles, newsbits, and comments published at OSNews are automatically copyrighted by OSNews, which happens automatically whenever something is published, by US law. However, our agreement with submitters is that they may republish their articles elsewhere (their own blogs, for example) after 30 days. You may also release your articles under creative commons after 30 days if you wish.

Multiple entries are allowed. Thanks for asking. I'll update the original announcement to say so.