Running OSNews.com is not exactly something that generates loads of income, yet it’s taking up a decent amount of time and energy that I have to find somewhere between my wife and kids, translation work, and the rest of my life. While OSNews will always remain free to access, it would mean the world to me if you could support my work financially.
There’s two ways to do this. First, you can become a Patreon, which will grant you access to an advertisement-free version of the website, as well as some comment flair to show off your big spender lifestyle (silver flair, gold flair, or a custom flair for the big ballers among you). Patreons donate a small fee every month.
Second, you can donate a one-time amount using Ko-Fi. Here, you are free to set whatever amount you want (starting at €5), but you won’t qualify for any of the extras you get by becoming a Patreon. However, anyone who’s crazy enough to make a large-enough donation will still get these extras, of course. Support is support, after all.
Thank you!
Also, if you wish to help out by donating and/or selling us hardware you really want me to devote time to here on OSNews, I can make that work too. For a few items I’m especially looking for, take a look at my personal website for more information.
“yet it’s taking up a decent amount of time and energy”
OK .. this might be unfair and seem rather unempathetic … but:
Is it?
While I still enjoy visiting this site from time to time, it has became very quiet and the “news” it delivers are mostly just links to articles that appeared somewhere else first – with maybe one rather uninformed original sentence commenting on it.
What was the last original story on OSnews?
What exactly is taking you so much time and effort?
And funny thing to observe, Thom:
every time someone else is in charge, because you are on vacation, there are actually more news, not less …
What I am trying to say:
as useful a news aggregator for this specific topic might be, I am really not sure OSnews serves this purpose any longer beyond a some nostalgia that might be still left.
So sorry to be harsh, but I will decline your request at this point.
This hasn’t happened in at least five years, probably more. The last time someone took over for me was… When I wrote my master’s thesis, like 12 years ago?
There’s a reason the site sometimes feels less active: it’s when I’m not available because of my ‘real’ job. Nobody else on the team of three (3) has the **time** to publish news. You seem to think sifting through, reading, and publishing news items doesn’t take up any time or effort, but trust me – you’re very wrong, and the fact nobody else has/makes the time for it is proof enough.
You’re of course entirely free to not want to support the site financially, but there’s really no need to be so vile and hateful about it when you clearly have no clue what goes into running a place like this.
I’ve been lurking before Haiku was OpenBeOS. This is one of my favorite websites. Please continue.
BeOS news was one of the original things I came here for like forever ago, and now I just come out of pure ancient habit. It’ll be a sad day when osnews.com isn’t here any more.
Yes: it might have been quite a while …
To put some action behind my criticism – here are 4 articles I stumbled upon today, that might be worth mentioning here on OSnews:
https://www.suse.com/news/SUSE-Preserves-Choice-in-Enterprise-Linux/
SUSE is forking RHEL to mitigate the announced changes by Red Hat.
(as follow-up to related articles on this very subject)
https://linuxiac.com/linux-hits-3-percent-market-share/
Hurray: Linux has now reached 3% marketshare on the desktop
(over 7% when we count ChromeOS)
https://www.righto.com/2015/03/12-minute-mandelbrot-fractals-on-50.html
Rendering and printing out fractals on a 60 year old computer
https://www.cloudbooklet.com/orbstack-docker-desktop-for-mac-users/
Containers on MacOS the easy and transparent way
Thom Holwerda,
I wouldn’t mind donating some hardware I no longer use like a 3dfx gpu or the whole computer for that matter. But the shipping costs from here to europe are even higher than buying the parts 🙁
This probably won’t work out, but if anyone is on long island and wants parts including GPUs, disks, network cards, etc and donate the proceeds to osnews, I’m game for it.
Perhaps attending one of the VCF events is an option for you? There’s one in NJ.
https://vcfed.org/
It’s one of my dreams to go to one of those. They always have the oldest, rarest, and most awesome stuff on display (and for sale/free pickup).
Thom Holwerda,
I never heard of them before. Most of those events are far but it could be fun. I haven’t been to one in a while, but sometimes linux user groups are good place swap hardware.
If you make it out this way and assuming it doesn’t bother your plans, let us know; it would be pretty cool to meet you in person!
May I suggest having tiered levels of donations and also having a competition to donate the most?
I hadn’t thought of it, but now I have – I’m not entirely sure if it would work. Many of the Ko-Fi donations so far are either from lurkers (who wouldn’t want their names on the site, I presume) or people who seem to want to remain anonymous (who I also can’t put on the site, for obvious reasons). As such, I’m not entirely sure how I would implement a competition/high score list, other than to just list the amounts – which people could easily claim I was faking.
OS news has been a long standing source of very interesting news and reviews of things I care a great deal about. Its outlasted so many other sites and forums I’ve been a part of. I think this account was registered in 2006, but I was posting far before that under other names. Its been worth it for a long time and always wanted to have some way of giving back. So the patreon model works very well for me. It would be my wish that everyone else who has contributed and received joy from this site over the years to think back on how much you value that content and make a contribution that acknowledges that.