-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: IMPORTANT NOTICE FROM LINUX JOURNAL, LLC.
Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2019 11:43:55 +1000
From: Linux Journal <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
The Awkward Goodbye
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*IMPORTANT NOTICE FROM LINUX JOURNAL, LLC:*
*On August 7, 2019 /Linux Journal/ shut its doors for good. All staff
were laid off and the company is left with no operating funds to
continue in any capacity. The web site will continue to stay up for the
next few weeks, hopefully longer for archival purposes if we can make it
happen.*
*–Linux Journal, LLC*
*
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*
*Final Letter from the Editor: The Awkward Goodbye*
by Kyle Rankin
Have you ever met up with a friend at a restaurant for dinner, then
after dinner you both step out to the street and say a proper
goodbye, only when you leave, you find out that you both are walking in
the same direction? So now, you get to walk together awkwardly until
the true point where you part, and then you have another, second
goodbye, that's much more awkward.
That's basically this post.
So, it was almost two years ago that I first said goodbye to /Linux
Journal/ and the /Linux Journal/ community in my post "So Long and
Thanks for All the Bash
<https://linuxjournal.cmail19.com/t/j-l-mhjkdyd-tykiudkrkt-r/>". That
post was a proper goodbye. For starters, it had a catchy title with a
pun. The post itself had all the elements of a proper goodbye: part
retrospective, part "Thank You" to the /Linux Journal/ team and the
community, and OK, yes, it was also part rant. I recommend you read (or
re-read) that post, because it captures my feelings about losing /Linux
Journal/ way better than I can muster here on our awkward second goodbye.
Of course, not long after I wrote that post, we found out that /Linux
Journal/ wasn't dead after all! We all actually had more time
together and got to work fixing everything that had caused us to die in
the first place. A lot of our analysis of what went wrong and what we
intended to change was captured in my article "What /Linux Journal's/
Resurrection Taught Me about the FOSS Community
<https://linuxjournal.cmail19.com/t/j-l-mhjkdyd-tykiudkrkt-y/>" that we
posted in our 25th anniversary issue.
So we set to work and things were starting to look very promising. One
of the changes I was particularly excited about was our expanded Deep
Dive section in each issue. This "long-form journalism" approach to
technical writing was something pretty special in the technical world
and coming from someone who wrote a few Deep Dives of his own, there was
something very freeing in knowing you could truly give a topic justice
without artificial constraints on page length. You, the readers, and
also new writers responded, and you could feel the new life and new
energy in each issue. After dying and being revived, it was finally
starting to look like some day soon we would be able to walk on our own.
Unfortunately, we didn't get healthy enough fast enough, and when we
found out we needed to walk on our own strength, we simply couldn't. So
here we are giving our second, much more awkward, goodbye. What happens
now? We gave each other a proper hug during the first goodbye, do we hug
again this time? Do we do the
hand-shake-that-turns-into-a-single-arm-hug thing? Do we just sort of
wave and smile?
It wouldn't be right to say goodbye without acknowledging the wonderful
/Linux Journal/ community we have been blessed with who have stuck with
us throughout the years and encouraged so much during our first goodbye.
To quote from my own recounting of that time:
Ultimately, we couldn't keep the lights on. /Linux
Journal/ announced that it was shutting down on December 1, 2017. I
followed up that announcement with an emotional farewell of my own.
If you read that farewell, you'll see that somewhere in the middle
it changed from a memoir into a manifesto. My sadness at seeing
something I had worked on for ten years going away was replaced by
anger that the Linux community had seemed to lose its way. I lost my
way. I took Linux and FOSS for granted. It became clearer than ever
to me that while Linux and FOSS had won the battle over the tech
giants a decade before, new ones had taken their place in the
meantime, and we were letting them win. Although I had written and
spoken about Linux and FOSS for years, and used it personally and
professionally, I felt like I hadn't done enough to support this
thing I cared about so much. The death of /Linux Journal/ was a
major factor in my decision to put my money where my mouth was, quit
my job, and join Purism so I could work full-time helping to forward
this cause.
So yeah, I took the news pretty hard. We all took the news pretty
hard, but where I had just lost a freelance writing gig, all of the
core /Linux Journal/ team had just lost their full-time jobs. It was
a difficult time, yet we also were flooded with so much support from
you, our readers. Some people contacted us just to tell us how much
they loved the magazine and how sorry they were to see it go. Others
offered to pay more for their subscriptions if that would somehow
help. Others still contacted us to see if they could develop a
fundraising program to keep the magazine alive. I can't stress how
much this incredible outpouring of support helped all of us during
this difficult time. Thank you.
So yes, thank you for sticking by us. We truly did everything we could
to make this a success, and I'm so sorry it didn't work out. On a
personal note, thank you to the rest of the /Linux Journal/ team. Not
being able to work with all of you and chat with you is going
to be the hardest part of all of this by far.
If you want to keep in touch, you can find me at
https://social.librem.one/@kyle on Mastodon and
https://twitter.com/@kylerankin
on Twitter.
Facebook <https://linuxjournal.cmail19.com/t/j-l-mhjkdyd-tykiudkrkt-j/>
Twitter <https://linuxjournal.cmail19.com/t/j-l-mhjkdyd-tykiudkrkt-t/>
YouTube <https://linuxjournal.cmail19.com/t/j-l-mhjkdyd-tykiudkrkt-i/>
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