Current contributions: $2,485 Only one hour left in our fund drive — please make a contribution now! Needed to reach fund drive goal: $1,215 Percentage…
Posts published in “Site News”
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…
These are the ten most read articles on FOSS Force for the month of February, 2016. 1. SourceForge and Slashdot Have Been Sold by Christine…
Things were going good for our Indiegogo fundraising campaign, then they stalled.
In case you don’t know, we’re in the midst of our 2016 Indiegogo fundraising campaign, seeking to raise a total of $3,700 to keep us funded. Actually, this is the amount by which we missed our last fundraising campaign last May, in which you generously contributed $2,300 to FOSS Force to enable us to offer a small amount of pay to our writers. The money contributed to our current campaign will be spent the same way. If we’re successful, this will fund us until at least the end of the year and perhaps forever, if revenue from other sources such as advertising continues to rise. The campaign went up in early January and currently has 23 days left.
Seven days ago, when we hit the halfway point of the campaign, things were looking good. With 30 days left in the campaign, we were only three percentage points from having raised half of our campaign goal. Our self-set daily goal, the amount we need to collect on a daily basis to meet our goal, was stable at around $55. Then things came to a screeching halt. Since February 7, the campaign has seen only two contributions for a total of $35, which has pushed our daily goal up to $85.
We need to turn this around. Our funding goal is not arbitrary, not if we are to continue to offer you at least the same level of coverage as you have come to expect from us. If we don’t make our goal it will mean we’ll have to cut back on our content — the only place we can cut — offering you less just when we need to be offering you more. This, of course, will lead to lower traffic to our site, which will lead to lower ad revenue…I think you see where this is going.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
These are the ten most read articles on FOSS Force for the month of January, 2016. 1. SourceForge and Slashdot Have Been Sold by Christine…
In the last couple of years we’ve begun to notice that in addition to the folks who visit FOSS Force on a regular basis to read our articles, we’re starting to see a community develop. We mainly see this in the comments sections at the bottom of each article, where many of you have become regulars by posting often, agreeing or disagreeing with our articles, and offering ideas from your own experience.
To us, it feels as if those of you who contribute your thoughts and ideas by regularly commenting have become a part of our site, a community of people who publicly represent what FOSS Force is about, just as much as Larry, Hunter, Ken, Isaac and the rest of us who write and produce the site. In other words, you’ve become a part of who we are, and although we have never met you, we feel as if you are friends of ours.
Let’s build on that, shall we? Let’s celebrate you, the community of readers who congregate and express yourselves through comments on our site, and make you an even more important part of FOSS Force than you already are. In other words, let’s do a little old fashioned community building.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
As you probably know by now, FOSS Force needs your help and we’re holding a fundraising campaign. You most likely figure we’re going to be doing a lot of begging, explaining exactly why you should support what we do here, and trying to guilt you into making a contribution. Yup, that’s how fundraising is done, so we’ll be doing a bit of all that. Most of all, however, we’re going to do our best to make this fun.
Ya see, “we’re wild and crazy guys” and gals — if we may steal some intellectual property from Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin and SNL. And not unlike the Czech brothers in the old skits, we’re refugees — in our case from the proprietary software world where we were caught throwing some rocks at Windows and OS X. But now that we’ve found software freedom, it’s time to party online with our Firefoxes, and raise the money we need in the process.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
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: 2016 Fund Drive
Our Indiegogo campaign with the descriptive title “FOSS Force: 2016 Fund Drive” has begun. We’d like you to pull out your wallet and make a contribution to help us continue to supply you with all of the great content you’ve come to expect from FOSS Force. Actually, you don’t even have to go to the effort of pulling out your wallet, you can just click and pay using your PayPal account. Then again, you might need to dig for your wallet if you want to pay by credit card, unless you’ve memorized the number.
If this were an NPR outlet, right about now I’d start telling you that your contributions help pay for all of the content you read on our site. That’s true; it does. Also if this were an NPR outlet, I’d be telling you that we’re user supported (in NPR’s case listener supported) and that 90 percent of our funding comes from readers like you. That’s not true. We run ads, offer sponsorships and such. It’s just that right now that’s not enough to pay the bills — but revenues are increasing and if we keep on keeping on we’ll soon be able to stand on our own two feet. Right now, we just need some help to see us through.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
These are the ten most read articles on FOSS Force for the month of December, 2015.
1. Is That Linux? No, It’s PC-BSD by Larry Cafiero. Published December 3, 2015. An encounter at a local coffee house causes a fellow customer to ask, “Is that Linux on your machine?” Nope, it wasn’t, but you know what it was. The title gives it away.
2. Linux Foundation’s Deal With the Devil by Christine Hall. Published December 14, 2015. The Linux Foundation made a deal to help Microsoft offer Linux certifications? Say it ain’t so, Joe.
3. Ubuntu Bugs That Won’t Go Away by Ken Starks. Published December 15, 2015. It’s one think when a bug needs fixing in an operating system. When the bug remains unfixed since 2012, that a whole ‘nother story.
If you’ve been visiting FOSS Force for a while, you might have noticed some changes around here. Nothing serious. We didn’t do anything drastic like change our layout or put our content up in twenty page slide shows or anything like that. But we’ve expanded, and I think, improved our content. We’re offering more coverage of FOSS than ever before, while also expanding into territories of free tech that lie outside the arena of software and Linux.
You might have also noticed that the expansion began just after our May fundraising campaign in which you gave us $2,300 to improve our site. Thanks to you, we have been able to pay our writers — not much mind you, truthfully a small fraction of what they should be paid — which has been a key element to our improved coverage.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux