May 13th, 2009
The new Linux.com is open for business
The Linux Foundation has opened the doors on its new Linux.com, a new news, discussion and blogging site which looks a little like ZDNet.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Personally I’m flattered.
My point is that the new site goes well beyond simple discussions of Linux. It’s heavy into applications, even those which, like Firefox, are best known as Windows apps. It follows the news.
The Firefox story is actually a link from a Linux Magazine article by ZDNet’s own Joe Brockmeier. It’s a good article.
Zonker has been following the Linux.com story closely, quoting the Foundation’s promises in March to make the new site a “community resource… for the community, by the community.”
Question. Which community?
The answer can be drawn either narrowly or broadly. Narrowly, it’s about the Linux operating system and applications that run on Linux. Broadly, it’s also about open source, the community ethos arising from it, the values of those communities, and the future of the Internet.
These are questions publishers, editors and writers are constantly fussing over. The editor’s answer is it depends on what the readers want. The publisher’s answer is it depends on what the advertiser wants, what the market the site seeks to serve wants.
It will be fun to see how the Linux Foundation, a non-profit consortium, answers that question over the next weeks, months and years. Y’all are a publisher now.
What do the readers think should be its answer?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 05/13/09
