Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
"We'd like to print more BSD articles but nobody is submitting any." Surely there must be a reason why people aren't writing/ submitting BSD articles though? That would be the amount of work involved in actually writing something. Speaking for myself, the reason I don't write anything or present at conferences is because I simply cannot believe that anyone would be interested in anything I have to say; the way I do things is obviously the same way that everyone else does things, right? ;-) An ideas list goes some way to helping. I think that a good directions to go are how-to articles and new-in- $VERSION articles. As for how-to articles, I have a few idea off of the top of my head: 1. Installation/getting started 2. Setting up a firewall/load balancer 3. Setting up a file-server 4. and so on ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
On 10/4/07 22:40, "Christian Weisgerber" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Paul Waring <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>> "We'd like to print more BSD articles but nobody is submitting any." >>> (Standard reply at German LinuxTag when you ask the press people >>> about this.) >> >> Surely there must be a reason why people aren't writing/submitting BSD >> articles though? > > That would be the amount of work involved in actually writing > something. Speaking for myself, the reason I don't write anything or present at conferences is because I simply cannot believe that anyone would be interested in anything I have to say; the way I do things is obviously the same way that everyone else does things, right? ;-) An ideas list goes some way to helping. Ceri -- That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all. -- Moliere ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
Paul Waring <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > "We'd like to print more BSD articles but nobody is submitting any." > > (Standard reply at German LinuxTag when you ask the press people > > about this.) > > Surely there must be a reason why people aren't writing/submitting BSD > articles though? That would be the amount of work involved in actually writing something. -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
Jim Stapleton wrote: I'd happily praise the virtues of FreeBSD in an article (giving proportionally equal time to it's drawbacks... few that they are), except I don't subscribe to any Linux mags, so I've no clue even what they would want. The feeling I get is that actually a lot of these magazines are a bit stretched for articles (as in they only just get enough), so they will probably consider any well-written article on a general FreeBSD topic. For an idea of what one UK magazine looks for though, here's their writing guidelines: http://tinyurl.com/2rxhnf Maybe those of us on this group could work together? We all work on articles to be submitted via the list, and submit them? Payment for articles is donated to the FreeBSD project for the various costs it has? That was my original idea - people send in articles, someone proof-reads and edits them if necessary and then sends them off to relevant magazines with instructions to make cheques payable to the FreeBSD Foundation. Paul ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
From my end I've never given this a thought. Thinking about it now, I'd happily praise the virtues of FreeBSD in an article (giving proportionally equal time to it's drawbacks... few that they are), except I don't subscribe to any Linux mags, so I've no clue even what they would want. Maybe those of us on this group could work together? We all work on articles to be submitted via the list, and submit them? Payment for articles is donated to the FreeBSD project for the various costs it has? The only thing I can think of is "A FreeBSD primer", how to go from burned CD to useful GUI install. -Jim Stapleton ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
Paul Waring wrote: > Daniel Seuffert wrote: > > But don't forget: It's hard work and you need people doing this work. > > That's the problematic part and that's the main reason imho why we > > don't have more media attention... > > Is there not a project (other than this mailing list) within the work of > the FreeBSD Foundation to promote BSD within the media? All it needs is > for a small group of people to contact existing Linux magazines and see > what kinds of articles they are looking for and whether they'd be > prepared to accept BSD ones, and then try and find people who are > willing to write them. > > I've taken a small step in emailing one of the UK magazines and asking > them if they'd include BSD groups in their local LUGs listings, it only > took a couple of minutes to write the email and the worst they can say > is "no". > > Paul > ___ > freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" A friend of mine: "Mahmut Kursun (Work)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> works for a Linux publisher in Munich (of several mags), he used to import BSD CDs & knows what it is :-) & he speaks English German & Turkish, so I suggest send him a copy. (i've cc'd him) -- Julian Stacey. Munich Computer Consultant, BSD Unix C Linux. http://berklix.com Escape Microsoft 20th April 2007: http://berklix.com/free/talk/ Ihr Rauch = mein allergischer Kopfschmerz. ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
Daniel Seuffert wrote: But don't forget: It's hard work and you need people doing this work. That's the problematic part and that's the main reason imho why we don't have more media attention... Is there not a project (other than this mailing list) within the work of the FreeBSD Foundation to promote BSD within the media? All it needs is for a small group of people to contact existing Linux magazines and see what kinds of articles they are looking for and whether they'd be prepared to accept BSD ones, and then try and find people who are willing to write them. I've taken a small step in emailing one of the UK magazines and asking them if they'd include BSD groups in their local LUGs listings, it only took a couple of minutes to write the email and the worst they can say is "no". Paul ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
Christian Weisgerber wrote: "We'd like to print more BSD articles but nobody is submitting any." (Standard reply at German LinuxTag when you ask the press people about this.) Surely there must be a reason why people aren't writing/submitting BSD articles though? Perhaps they don't think BSD articles are wanted (a catch-22 situation I guess in which no one sees any articles for BSD so they think that such works aren't wanted so they don't bother submitting any...), but that is a hurdle that could easily be passed once a couple of articles had been accepted by one of the main Linux magazines. Paul ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, Ivan Voras wrote: Robert Watson wrote: Some things that might be neat to see articles about in the next six months as 7.0 approaches: I've had quite a few hits on my little summary "what's cooking for 7.0" page, so I concurr the people are interested. I suggest to make an official section on the www.freebsd.org web which will host these kind of articles. Sort of tied into the release system, so in addition to the usual "Release notes", "Errata", "Supported platforms" and other documents, each .0 version would have a "Highlights" section (one or, preferebly, more pages) with a high-level to mid-level description of the new (non arch-specific) features, presented as "selling points" for the whole RELENG branch. I know that there's a short paragraph or two about new features in the release notes currently, and I think this should stay, but I really think there's a need for longer articles hosted on the official (i.e. not on third-party) web site. If this passes in some form, I volunteer to write about the storage-oriented things such as gjournal, ZFS & similar. I agree. The release notes are a great technical reference, but they are hardly marketing pieces. It would be good to see media- and human-friendly articles highlighting the new features in a release (and their importance), as well as articles on specific topics. The same thing is true of the status reports vs. commits, btw: sometimes making a list sorted by interest as opposed to by integration date is important. :-) Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
Robert Watson wrote: > Some things that might be neat to see articles about in the next six > months as 7.0 approaches: I've had quite a few hits on my little summary "what's cooking for 7.0" page, so I concurr the people are interested. I suggest to make an official section on the www.freebsd.org web which will host these kind of articles. Sort of tied into the release system, so in addition to the usual "Release notes", "Errata", "Supported platforms" and other documents, each .0 version would have a "Highlights" section (one or, preferebly, more pages) with a high-level to mid-level description of the new (non arch-specific) features, presented as "selling points" for the whole RELENG branch. I know that there's a short paragraph or two about new features in the release notes currently, and I think this should stay, but I really think there's a need for longer articles hosted on the official (i.e. not on third-party) web site. If this passes in some form, I volunteer to write about the storage-oriented things such as gjournal, ZFS & similar. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
On Wed, 28 Mar 2007, Christian Weisgerber wrote: Daniel Seuffert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I don't know much about the specific situation in the UK, but I can confirm BSD is not well represented in the media. "We'd like to print more BSD articles but nobody is submitting any." (Standard reply at German LinuxTag when you ask the press people about this.) Some things that might be neat to see articles about in the next six months as 7.0 approaches: - The FreeBSD ZFS port, especially in a week's time or so once it's committed. Introduction to ZFS highlighting its features, some tutorial content on using it with FreeBSD, etc. I've had countless people approach me over the last month at various UNIX and BSD conferences, and they're very excited about ZFS on FreeBSD. In fact, it's frequently cited as a reason to try FreeBSD instead of Linux. - Using the pf firewall and its associated features (pfsync, carp, etc) with FreeBSD. OpenBSD successfully makes a lot of noise about the availability of these features on their platform, and for good reason: they're great features. We should be making more noise about them being available on our platform -- especially given our SMP network stack support. This might be best backed up by a bit of measurement and optimization. - FreeBSD audit support -- we've had some articles on this already, but it's worth a few more. Integrated audit with portable APIs and file format set us apart from Linux, and there are some nice opportunities to bring in new volunteers to develop audit tracking and management tools. Support in 6.2 is considered experimental, but we'd like it to be production-quality in 6.3. - FreeBSD SCTP support -- SCTP has some really great protocol features, and FreeBSD 7.x will ship with it. This is a chance to highlight some exciting new technology, and the fact that FreeBSD has a reference implementation of it. - FreeBSD support for sun4v and sun4v technology generally -- again, a chance to highlight FreeBSD as being involved in a cutting edge technology platform. - FreeBSD and high SMP scalability -- now that many of the patches used to accomplish very high database scalability on FreeBSD are going into the base CVS tree for inclusion in 7.x, it would be really interesting to see an article on the process by which the FreeBSD team measured and optimized FreeBSD performance for 8+ core systems, from new thread libraries to changes in kernel synchronization, time management, scheduler, etc. Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
Daniel Seuffert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't know much about the specific situation in the UK, but I can > confirm BSD is not well represented in the media. "We'd like to print more BSD articles but nobody is submitting any." (Standard reply at German LinuxTag when you ask the press people about this.) -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
On Fri, 23 Mar 2007, Julian H. Stacey wrote: > Best bet to be paid, might be to go for a USA / world distributed > mag like Dr Dobbs, (that has a hopefully decent turnover to start > with), & sell an article to them & simultaneously give them contacts ... This reminds me. I have offered to co-author for any developers who want to write an article for Dr. Dobb's (or other magazines). I will send a query letter (to the magazine) and help write the article. If anyone wants to write an article but don't know where or how to start, please let me know. There are many new features/techniques in FreeBSD (and other *BSDs) that would be interesting to Dr. Dobb's or other magazines. If you are working on something and want to write (or help write) about it, let me know. Even if you don't want to write, I can interview you to develop the articles. (And I am sure there are other members of the marketing AT FreeBSD.org that would be willing to help too.) Feel free to forward this email. Jeremy C. Reed ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
Paul Waring wrote: > I've noticed over the past few years that there has been a growing > number of Linux magazines available in the UK (Linux Format, Linux > Magazine and Linux User/Developer are the ones that immediately spring What one can leverage with magazines depends on local turnover/ size of national business, & if you can amortise costs by publishing abroad too: It's a lot harder to write an article (more work, that fewer can do), than it is for foreign magazines to find local people to translate to local language. eg many Germans in computing read English without problem, so its worth offering any BSD article anyone writes to non English speaking countries world wide. Best bet to be paid, might be to go for a USA / world distributed mag like Dr Dobbs, (that has a hopefully decent turnover to start with), & sell an article to them & simultaneously give them contacts to the UK etc book trade to expand their international sales. Mags want exclusive rights if paying, but if they get article free (& translate to German, Korean or whatever themselves) then you can dictate terms. SKIP REST IF NOT INTERESTED IN BRITISH & GERMAN MAGs. I've been in Munich many years, but British, so fell in to conversation with a Brit. from Linux Mag. few years back when he was visiting Systems, a trade fair in Munich: Germany was Linux mag's cash cow, & Britain was a struggling low turn over low\profit extension (*), so they often took German stuff, translated it & tossed in a bit of local UK if they found it. They weren't overflowing with money for the UK op. ( I was asking them if they wanted a BSD CD mastered, & they said ask German parent co. as more money) (*) Still, remember the Beaching effect, the end station only _appears_ unprofitable, but if cut, the whole is less healthy, so UK probably helped toward commercial health of whole. He thought UK was pretty small market as a whole: far more MickeySoft addicted than Germany (chimes with what I saw): In Waterstones Tun Wells, UK: MS everywhere, virtually zilch else I recall (but TW has no university or polytechnic, no real industry or manufacturing, just inumerable pen pushers, (TW was 1 of 12 designated zone centres for admin. in event of nuclear war, presumably 'cos no industry, (& Unix is since found where more technicly sophisticated users are perhaps ?). In Canterbury (small agricultural town with a cathedral, hence called a city, with a University (significant to early UK Unix), even in the Uni. bookshop there seemed rather a lot of MS & I dont recall BSD, but must have been some Linux. In Munich Germany, (city of ~2x 10^6 with lots of Universities & industry etc) although most is MS; Easy to find a variety of Linux Mags, & in main computer shopping street, shops sell h/ware without OS, & they Have heard of Linux & sometimes BSD, & dont assume pirate just 'cos you dont want to buy MS with h/ware. ... SO unless things have changed in last half decade, UK Linux mags might not have lots of cash for articles, & Linux mags are hard to find some places eg TW, & BSD ie exotic beyond belief. German Mags (apart from Linux mag & Linux User mag): FreeX is not exactly a BSD mag. but nearish ... they publish in German, They are small & Not flush. Editor Rosa Riebl speaks English, they'd likely be interested if you weren't looking for [much] money http://www.cul.de +49.911.400030. IX mag. by http://www.heise.de (who also publish a great hardware mag `CT', but in German & off topic) `IX' mag has occasional trials in English, & an English web http://www.heise.de/english/ -- Julian Stacey. Munich Computer Consultant, BSD Unix C Linux. http://berklix.com Escape Microsoft 20th April 2007: http://berklix.com/free/talk/ Ihr Rauch = mein allergischer Kopfschmerz. ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media
Paul Waring wrote: > I've noticed over the past few years that there has been a growing > number of Linux magazines available in the UK (Linux Format, Linux > Magazine and Linux User/Developer are the ones that immediately spring > to mind), but there is still no widely available printed magazine aimed > at users of FreeBSD (or any other BSD for that matter). I've been > wondering why this is the case for a while, and was reminded of the > issue during a discussion after a talk given by Robert Watson at this > week's UKUUG conference. There doesn't seem to be a lack of > people/organisations using FreeBSD in the UK, there are a number of BSD > user groups and I'm sure plenty of people attend their local LUG as well. > > To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why FreeBSD doesn't get better media > coverage than it currently does in the UK, but I did think of a few > ideas that might help improve matters: > > 1. Try and get a list of BSD user groups printed in the major Linux > magazines - Linux Format does this for LUGs so perhaps they'd be open to > including UUGs as well. > > 2. Get mini BSD stories into the existing Linux magazines - most of them > have a small bar at the bottom of the main news pages with short > summaries of stories and it would be great some BSD-related items there. > > 3. Have people send in various items which someone edits into a one or > two page 'This month in FreeBSD' article (or rather 'three months ago in > FreeBSD', given the lead times for articles). > > The other advantage, apart from extra coverage of FreeBSD, is that > magazines will often pay fees for articles, so if an tutorial was put > together by several people then that fee could be donated to the FreeBSD > Foundation (assuming everyone was happy with that) and everyone wins. > > What do other people think? Is this lack of coverage a problem which > should be addressed, or is FreeBSD doing well enough in the UK as it is? I don't know much about the specific situation in the UK, but I can confirm BSD is not well represented in the media. I really like to see more media attention worldwide and your ideas are reasonable imho. But don't forget: It's hard work and you need people doing this work. That's the problematic part and that's the main reason imho why we don't have more media attention... - Daniel ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
