Why You Should Support FOSS Force

We’re down to the last six days of our Indiegogo fundraising campaign, and we’re a little behind schedule as far as making our goal is concerned — but it’s still within reach. It all depends on you.

As we ready this article for publication, we’re $1,371 away from reaching our goal of $3,700. The funds are needed to help us meet our operating expenses through at least the end of the year — possibly forever if our other revenue streams continue to increase as expected. As things stand right now, this means we have to raise about $230 each and every day between now and when our fundraiser ends if we’re to meet our goal — and every day we fall short, that number increases.

So why should you support FOSS Force? We’ve given that some thought, and we’ve come up with a list of some of the things which we think makes FOSS Force deserving of your support. Read them over, and if you think the work we do is valuable, please show it with your contribution to our Indiegogo campaign.

We cover the news that matters to the FOSS community. Not only that, we cover it from a FOSS perspective. Below are just a few of the news stories we’ve covered just since we began our current fundraiser.

• The sale of SourceForge and Slashdot: Back in late January, we were one of the first — if not the first — news site to break the story that Dice had sold the websites SourceForge and Slashdot to SourceForge, LLC. We were also the only news site to get an interview with Logan Abbott, the president and one of the owners of the company that made the purchase.

• SourceForge loses DevShare. This is a story we’ve been following on our pages since SourceForge’s practice of including “trial copies” of proprietary software inside FOSS downloads first became news several years back. We were also the first to break this story.

• The Ubuntu BQ tablet. Not only were we one of the first news sites to bring you the news of this, we covered it from the perspective of dyed-in-the-wool Linux users who understand that despite any reservations about Canonical, a Ubuntu phone or tablet will be much more free than Android. As we often do, we published the above linked “straight” news story on this, as well as an op/ed piece and an opinion poll.

• VIMAGE coming to BSD. You expect us to cover Linux, but we’re also proud of our coverage of the “other” open source operating system, BSD in all of its flavors. Every Thursday, Larry “the BSD guy” Cafiero reports on the latest BSD developments.

• India shuts down “Free Basics.” This was a story that spoke directly to the concept of a free and open Internet, and we were one of the first sites on top of this story, explaining why we think Facebook’s claim that India was heartlessly taking “free Internet” from India’s poor was essentially a straw man argument.

• Judge says “no” to SCO. We were also one of the first news sites on this story. During February, we reported on the ending of the legal wrestling between SCO and IBM with three articles, the most recent being a few days ago with our report that after 13 years, the case seems to finally be over. Spoiler alert: IBM won.

• Lumina desktop getting ready for FreeBSD. Not only does this story illustrate our dedication to covering BSD, it also shows why what happens in the BSD world is important to GNU/Linux users as well, as Lumina is also available as a Linux port.

• LXer suffering from scattered outages. A few weeks back, when the popular Linux site LXer became unavailable to many, we were the only news site, to our knowledge, who covered it. Some of you even thanked us, because until we brought it up, you were afraid that something was wrong with your setup. No, it was down for practically everybody.

• Manjaro available for the Raspberry Pi. We also offer extensive coverage of the Raspberry Pi, such as this story on yet another Linux distro being ported to run on everybody’s favorite $35 device.

• BSD not affected by glibc security vulnerabiliy. More BSD coverage not picked up by most other tech news sites. The glibc vulnerability was important news in the Linux world for a day or two until patches were issued. With BSD sharing much code with Linux, BSD users needed to know they were in the clear on this one.

• Linux Mint hacked: We were one of the first sites to tell you about the intrusion into Linux Mint’s servers by black hat hackers. We’re still following this story and publishing updates as necessary.

• Software Freedom Conservancy makes case for FOSS at NY City Hall. Another important FOSS news story that was ignored by all mainstream tech sites and even most FOSS sites. The conservancy goes to bat in New York City in support of a bill that would make it policy for the city government to give weight to free and open source software over proprietary software when making purchasing decisions.

• The Raspberry Pi 3. We were one of only two sites that broke this story minutes after the official announcement was made by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Pi 3, by the way, is the first Raspberry Pi to come with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, as well as being the first to feature a 64-bit processor.

The FOSS Force News Feed. On the left column of every page on FOSS Force, you’ll find our news feed, with links to important news stories on FOSS and Linux that have been published on other websites within the last 24 hours. The news feed is updated every 30 minutes 24/7.

No sponsored content. Nearly all news sites today are okay with something called “sponsored content,” or advertisements masquerading as legitimate news articles. The better sites will at least let you know that what you’re reading has been bought and paid for, but some sites are perfectly happy to have you believe that a sponsored article is a legitimate news article. At FOSS Force, we’re absolutely opposed to the notion of sponsored content and flatly turn down any requests by marketers to place sponsored content on our site.

The FOSS Force polls. We also help you to understand how other FOSS supporters are thinking on topical issues through our frequent polls. Oh, and don’t forget our quizzes, which are informative and fun.

Coverage of Linux and FOSS conferences. We’re also on the scene with our writers and reporters in place to offer you on-the-spot reporting from most of the major North American conferences. This year we’ve already offered you boots-on-the-ground coverage of SCALE, and already have plans in place to cover LinuxFest Northwest, OSCON, SouthEast LinuxFest and All Things Open. Undoubtedly, more will be added as the year progresses.

Again, it’s essential for us to reach our fundraising goal if we are to continue to maintain and even improve the level of coverage you’ve come to expect from us. If you think we provide a valuable service, and if we’re an important source of information for you, won’t you please go to our Indiegogo page and make a contribution?