Free Software Magazine - issue 1 is out!

Well...

First of all, thanks a lot!

We did submit it to Slashdot. However, the news was published... in the "developers" section of Slashdot. Very few people saw it, and the ones who did see it were developers - they would have been much more interested in a highly technical magazine.

Oh well...

Merc.

The magazine is expensive - especially compared to the US market.
But most magazines live on advertising. We can't do that, not for a long time. Also, we are planning on allocate a good number of ads to free software companies for free, for ever.
Printing a magazine, when you have short runs, is extremely expensive. Postage is very expensive too (1.42 per magazine, just to send it!).
In the future, we are planning on dropping the price. But for now we *have* to play safe, because we want to be here in 3,4, 5 years time.

Put it this way: by paying a higher subscription price, you are sponsoring high quailty,, *free* (as in freedom) contents.

I am hoping there are quite a few people out there willing to do that.

(fingers crossed)
Merc.

I wish you good luck and don't feel offended or something, but...

Put it this way: by paying a higher subscription price, you are sponsoring high quailty,, *free* (as in freedom) contents.

Authors certainly have copyright on the text in the magazine, right? In such way that one may not scan the magazine and post it on the Internet, right? (Hey, that seriously happens!)

I used to buy 'Linux Magazine' here in the Netherlands. Its in Dutch (not bad for me), but it doesn't go very in depth and the news is always old. For 10 EUR, besides me being rather poor, it just ain't worth it in the longer run.

Wish you good luck though. Its an interesting economic scheme and who knows what'll happen...

wery good quality content, recently released gnomejournal's second edition can't get even get close. unfortunately :(

article about file formats is especially nice, the same thoughts i have had on this, but MUCH better covered.

Can you explain what you feel was lacking in GNOME Journal? You're statement seem pretty vague.

sri

I'm a different person than GP but except for the 'usability study' which i found lacking it was quite okay. Already gave the author feedback elsewhere btw.

Copy/paste from elsewhere: Whilst the study is not about Linux (distribution) usability, the test is still trying to cover too little, with too less details, while trying to reach a major conclusion. Who is the test person, what are her hobbies, what is she good at, whats her daily job? Those are details i'd like to know because those influence how she (the test person) relates to GNOME (the DE; not really Linux). This was partly done, but 'DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95' experience is broad (if not non-standard given most people jumped on the Windows bandwagon from Windows 98). Besides that, it could also be of interest how fast she grokked GNOME, or what problems she faced. She'd have written such in her daily (b)log concerning her experiences, for example. It all depends on what you exactly want to research and you have to define that. If you don't, it gets too broad, and receives harsh criticism for that reason.

In short if i have to say what could have been easily done better: 1) more details about the test person 2) multiple test persons (for example from same background, or perhaps rather from multiple, depending on what you'd like to proof) and 3) be more clear, in depth about what has been learned, what went right, what went wrong, what she liked, what she disliked. Basically more in depth about the experiences with GNOME rather than the overal experience which apparently worked out, thats what i missed.

I appreciate the time you took to type your thoughts down. I agree with you on your points as well. It's only through good feedback that we can improve the quality of the release. None of us are writers by trade so there's a certain level of experience that is required that can only improve with time.

sri

The article on free file formats is definitely worth a read. Nice design. I missed some kind of "Comment/Discuss this article"-thing. I know, I for one, would have used it.

We talked and talked about having a "post a comment" feature.
The problem is that having a "forum-like" system for each article would require a gread deal of effort and time (see: moderating, etc.).
We decided that we wanted to concentrate on good contents - at least initially!

Merc.

I already kinda guessed that. It isn't a must-have for a magazine as such either. I also appreciate in depth covering and consistent policies better than commenting/flaming features :)

* I really like the web design. Very sexy.
* The PDF design is nice, too.
* The articles appear to be too long for reading them online.
* The pills section is nice, but there's no way to comment. Maybe I missed it. Thus, it's still a little bit static.

Overall, a nice product.

One thing I usually miss when I look at Linux related magazines in general, is hardware testing and best-buy lists. I was told already that geeks don't like these lists but I do. Most of the content of a magazine I get faster on the web, and I get it just in time - this is when I'm interested.

However, information about which mainboard is not only well supported, but speedy, which graficcard has a good price-quality relationsship, etc. is usually hard to find.

I've always considered this funny since hardware vendors buy advertising space, usually. Linux users are probably spending more money on hardware than the average user. The only problem might be higher costs of testing hardware.

>* I really like the web design. Very sexy.

Thanks!

> * The PDF design is nice, too.

That was the harders part... and it's all AUTOMATICALLY generated using LaTeX!

> * The articles appear to be too long for reading them online.

I see what you mean. We wanted to have in-depth articles, and...

>* The pills section is nice, but there's no way to comment. Maybe I missed it. Thus, it's
> still a little bit static.

See my previous comment!

Thanks a lot for your comments :-)

Merc,

Granted; the articles are long indeed. But lets face it: most articles you can scratch up on the net are to short... The long articles makes it a bit more like a real magazine.