Bonum Certa Men Certa

Bringing The H Open/H-Online Articles Back Online Without Help From Heise

H Online



Summary: Glyn Moody is beginning to repost his articles from The H, but what about his colleagues, who have been far more prolific and frequent with their coverage there?

THOUSANDS of articles later and after years of valuable research for high-quality reporting, Heise stupidly decided to take it all offline, essentially deleting a huge amount of journalistic work with the simple flip of a switch. FOSS foes must have been cheerful, for a lot of the record about them and against them simply vanished overnight.



We have reached out to three of the regular writers at The H, including the chief editor. Two of them appear to have given up trying to restore the stories based on their reply to us (a a bit cryptic, as they don't want to disparage Heise) and one of them, Glyn Moody, is now taking the matter into his own hands [1]. He will republish all the articles in his own blog, starting with this Linus Torvalds interview. Moody did not write many articles for The H; some people wrote literally thousands of articles. Will those be restored (published online)? We are still on the case, hoping to combat this gross deletionism by Heise (whose main site is sparingly promoting Apple and Microsoft these days, with two top-level sections for each).

"Stories should not cease to exist when they're no longer "profitable" or when the proprietor does not agree with them (or is apathetic towards them)."More writers need to defend themselves (pro-actively) against this type of censorship. Recently, a lot of good FOSS sites vanished or came close to vanishing (the domain names were not renewed, whereupon all the stories became totally inaccessible). To name some examples, The Source and MonoNoNo are gone.

Some time later this week we are planning to join Tux Machines to our server, ensuring preservation of the entire site and continued updates too. No site can last forever (one day the Web too will cease to exist), but when copyright and control are left in the hands of writers, then at least for their lifetime's span they are likely to keep the information publicly accessible in one form or another; anything else is a soft form of censorship and tyranny. Several years ago, after Microsoft had maliciously destroyed Yahoo, my first-ever Web site, a site set up when I was 15, was shut down along with Geocities. Those people don't value information, they are only driven by greed. Stories should not cease to exist when they're no longer "profitable" or when the proprietor does not agree with them (or is apathetic towards them).

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. "The H Open" is Closed and Offline; Here's What I Aim to Do...
    Long-time readers of this blog may recall that for some years I wrote for the UK Heise title "The H Open". Sadly, that closed last year; even more sadly, Heise seems to have taken its archive off line. That raises all sorts of interesting questions about the preservation of digital knowledge, and the responsibility of publishers to keep titles that they have closed publicly accessible - not least to minimise link-rot.

    However, here I want to concentrate on the question of what I, personally, can do about this. After all, however minor my columns for The H Open were, they none the less form a part of the free software world's history, however footling. Of course, I have back-up copies of all of my work, so the obvious thing to do is to post them here. I can do that, because I never surrendered the copyright, and they therefore remain mine to do with as I please.


Recent Techrights' Posts

Representing and Speaking for Animals
If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Slop Images in VentureBeat, Linux Foundation Spam Made With LLM Slop and Slop Images
The only relief or upside - if any exists - is that the pace of slop was down a bit this week
 
Financiers and Sponsors of the Slop Hype (Pyramid Scheme Waiting to End, Bubble That Will Inevitably Implode)
It's also burning the planet
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Google Helps Ponzi Schemes and Slopfarms in Google News
Slopfarms are a real pain
Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Retiring at 62 and URL Filtering HTTP(S) Proxy on Qubes OS
Links for the day
Links 29/08/2025: Lisa Cook Sues Convicted Felon and Backdoor Mandate in UK Resisted
Links for the day
Links 29/08/2025: Arti 1.5.0, War on Public Health (CDC), and Slop 'Bros' Made to Pay for Their Mass Plagiarism
Links for the day
No, 4Chan is Not Fighting for You by Lawyering Up Against Ofcom (UK)
Don't mistake proto-fascists for people who "fight for you". They don't.
Downlplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
we won't publish much whilst on holiday
In Many Places in the World Vista 11 "Market Share" is Going Down, Not Up
In some countries Windows is already down to third place or lower
More Microsoft-Connected Layoffs, at Least Third Time This Month! (Also Another Death on Campus)
Microsoft as a "gaming" company is where studios, projects, games, and even developers come to die
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 28, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, August 28, 2025
Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Poems, Games, and Java 25 Performance
Links for the day
Links 28/08/2025: Greenland 'Interferences' by US and Skinnerboxes to Get Banned in Korean Schools
Links for the day
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025