3fb555ab9eedd368b6a913d46047b006
What Happened to CNX?
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: The GNU/Linux userbase and the Free software “community” (as in, people who do it for ideological reasons, principles such as altruism, fun and sharing rather than purely for money) are being abandoned by the media that used to cover news of interest rather than paid-for junk (like "sponsored" placements), wrapped inside an extensive barbwire of surveillance
THERE is a high degree of skulduggery in the GNU/Linux world, as people drift away from the community (yes, there is actually such a thing!) and sell out to cash-rich corporate masters. In an principled society with money-centric upbringing it's bound to get worse over the generations. One recent example of that is Phoronix -- a heart-breaking 'defection' which left us unable to even link to it anymore (it would help interests hostile to our movement). Techrights and/or Tux Machines were the biggest sources of traffic to Phoronix, according to Alexa (we linked to that site around 40,000-60,000 times over the years).
"This week we mentioned what had happened to Linux.com and over the years we gave many other examples."There are other kinds of betrayals which come about more in the form of "takeover" rather than sellout. In other words, it's a misuse of power or change of ownership. This week we mentioned what had happened to Linux.com and over the years we gave many other examples. The Linux Foundation is, in general, a big anti-community force and it corrupts some "Linux" blogs (named specifically in the video above) with its ads-as-articles webspam. Softpedia, for instance, pretty much collapsed after it had mistreated its author whose section, the "Linux" section, brought the most traffic to Softpedia (in fact, earlier this month Google News added his site to the index, which he was exceptionally excited about).
"...the video above focuses on CNX Software as a cautionary tale..."It ought to be mentioned that we're not 'slagging off' every site other than us. For instance, 9 years ago we commended LinuxGizmos (formerly LinuxDevices), which is mentioned at the beginning of the video above. The focus of the video is actually none of the sites above; the video above focuses on CNX Software as a cautionary tale (and borderline sellout). I spoke to its founder and chief over the years and I think he's sincere and well-meaning in general; but like Michael Larabel, in a desperate pursuit of money he's making big compromises, which in turn ruin the site and put off many readers (at least two of whom I've heard from; I won't mention names here). They don't want Windows spam (paid-for placements) and they worry that it has been getting worse over time. ⬆