Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Opening Up Linux Journal and O'Reilly

Author:Doc Searls
Posted:8/25/1999; 8:03:38 PM
Topic:Opening Up Linux Journal and O'Reilly
Msg #:9902 (In response to 9840)
Prev/Next:9901 / 9903

Phil's beliefs are ones that Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times and most of the publishing world agrees with.

The same beliefs are ones that Forbes, Fortune, The New York Times, Fast Company, Red Herring, Wired and Upside to varying degrees disagree with (Wired and Upside don't put the current issue on the Web, for example).

I'm in the second camp. Phil is in the first. We don't agree. We do understand each other. So there you go.

I think the real issue here is what works in both media, not whether Linux Journal or O'Reilly are being hypocritical, or whatever the hell the philosophy behind open source is. (Does putting their content on the Web for free put Forbes & Fortune in the open source camp? Hell, I dunno.)

But both Phil and Tim are leading members of very active communities, and both are very sensitive in their own ways to those communities -- far more than any conventional publishers I know.

Maybe they read their communities wrong, but I'm not so sure about that. It's clear that both are feeling their way along while holding to default policies that predate the very changes they helped cause. The irony may be exquisite, but the defaults remain set until they are convincingly disproven.

Of course, in that same spirit of love and friendship, I am doing my best to disprove them.

Doc

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