Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller
Our guest writer offers his views on why you should support FOSS Force with your contribution to our Indiegogo fundraising campaign.
We are blessed with a good number of online news outlets that cover free and open source software. Why, then, should we care about FOSS Force?
For one thing, the more the merrier. The more eyes that are trained upon the development of “the people’s software,” the more its fame will spread, which means not only more users but more developers. And that means more — and more useful — free and open source software, which is good for all of us.
FOSS Force is run by Christine Hall, a long-time journalist whose experience is not mainly in tech — or FOSS. Her lack of IT reporting experience in general is not as important, in the journalastic context, as a lack of FOSS reporting experience; Christine started using Linux in 2002 but didn’t start FOSS Force until 2010.
Before FOSS Force, Christine spent many years digging for general interest stories, many of them negative, instead of hanging breathlessly on every word from a Red Hat or Canonical or another project’s spokesperson. She says FOSS Force “bites the hand that feeds us,” which means that even though FOSS is their bread and butter, Christine is willing to run negative stories about things that aren’t right or don’t work as claimed.
This willingness, in the world of old-school journalism, is almost the definition of integrity. It doesn’t mean Christine is running a 100 percent negative website, just one that looks at both sides of the coin before deciding if it’s heads or tails.
We might even say, “FOSS Force is Fair and Balanced,” if a news outlet that is famously neither fair nor balanced wasn’t already using that slogan.
Whatever. I’ll still call Christine and FOSS Force, “Fair and Balanced,” if I want — because they are!
Robin “Roblimo” Miller is a freelance writer and former editor-in-chief at Open Source Technology Group, the company that owned SourceForge, freshmeat, Linux.com, NewsForge, ThinkGeek and Slashdot. He still serves as a video editor at Slashdot. He also publishes the blog Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller’s Personal Site.
We’re currently in the midst of our 2016 Indiegogo fundraising drive. Your support is crucial. Won’t you please visit our fundraising page and make a contribution to support FOSS Force?
No.
Hey guys and gals, we’ve got the coolest perk ever for our Indiegogo campaign, and we’re sharing it with you here in the comments section before announcing it on our front page. We’ve heard from you that getting through the captcha when you’re making a comment can sometimes be a pain. Well, now you’ll be able to post comments to our articles simply by typing your comment and clicking “Post Comment.” No captcha or filling in the email text box when you want to make a comment — and you’ll be able to edit your comments after you post them as well, just in case you made a typo.
Our “Frequent Commenters Membership,” available through our Indiegogo fundraiser, gets you your own account on FOSS Force. You login to your account and all of your commenting is captcha free — and the post will automatically go up using the username you give us when we set-up your account. In addition, after we get ten or so of you signed up, each week we’ll offer a discussion topic which will only be available to logged-in members. And down the road, we have even more ideas we might implement.
The memberships are available for a $25 contribution to our Indiegogo fundraising campaign. This is just one way we’ve come up with to say thank you for your support. To claim your membership, just go to our Indiegogo page now and make your contribution!
http://igg.me/at/foss-force/x/10540979
Oh, and whether you make a contribution or not, thank you for being a part of FOSS Force. 🙂