[Wftl-lug] No more TUX Magazine

[Christian Einfeldt]

hi,

On 1/2/07, Marcel Gagne <marcel at marcelgagne.com> wrote:
>
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> In case anyone is curious, TUX Magazine has ceased publication. Some of
> you
> will remember that I helped create TUX and that I was the Editor in Chief
> for
> the first issue.


Thanks, Marcel, for telling us this.  The Linux and open source world is
big, and it's impossible to keep track of every person's role, even someone
who is such a prominent publisher such as yourself.  I actually did not know
this bit of history.

>
> That's all I have on this one.


At the risk of sounding unpopular, IMHO this is not a terrible thing, even
though of course we would like to see every single endeavor in the FOSS
space succeed commercially.  We, the FOSS community, along with on-line
Windows and Mac users, are creating so much content on-line that we are
disrupting almost every single content-provider out there.  In fact, as Doc
Searls of LJ says, it's *conversation*, not content that matters.  Content
is one way.  Conversation is two-way.  People want to be involved.  IMHO,
many print publications are too slow, and too static.  Business models based
on I ---> thou conversations are losing revenue rapidly.  Movie theater
chains, movie studios, radio, TV, major print newspapers, book publishers,
all of them are facing the reality of YouTube's
65,000<http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/google_youtube.html>new
videos being posted daily, and 100 million videos being serverd daily.
Daily.  Again, to quote Doc Searls, "Open source is what happens when the
demand side supplies itself."

So while I offer my condolences to our community members who had put their
heart and soul into the publication of Tux magazine, I remain mostly upbeat
about our future.  The demise of some portions of the print publicatin
sector bodes well for the revolution that we call the Internet.  After all,
Tux was born on-line, and the most vital companies are those that are
harnessing the power of FOSS in the environment where it thrives:  the
Internet.

I am far more worried about Warren Buffet's support for the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation (BMGF) than I am about the loss of Tux Mag.  BMGF gives old
licenses for decript software to those who would best be served by FOSS, and
the US taxpayer subsidizes this activity by Microsoft getting a
tax-deductoin for the "fair market value" of the licenses it has donated.  I
am not a rapid Microsoft hater, but this aspect if BMGF's activities poses a
keen danger to freedom in cyberspace.

Christian Einfeldt,
Producer, The Digital Tipping
Point<http://archive.org/details/digitaltippingpoint>
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