Doc Searls Weblog

Linux Journal is folding.

Carlie Fairchild, who has run the magazine almost since it started in 1994, posted Linux Journal Ceases Publication today on the website. So far all of the comments have been positive, which they should be. Throughout its life, Linux Journal has been about as valuable as a trade pub can be, and it’s a damn shame to see it go. I just hope a way can be found to keep the site and the archives alive for the duration, as a living legacy.

I suppose a rescue might still be possible. But, as Carlie wrote in her post, “While we see a future like publishing’s past—a time when advertisers sponsor a publication because they value its brand and readers—the advertising world we have today would rather chase eyeballs, preferably by planting tracking beacons in readers’ browsers and zapping them with ads anywhere those readers show up. But that future isn’t here, and the past is long gone.”

I’m working hard at making that future happen (see the list below), and it bums me deeply that we didn’t succeeded in time to save Linux Journal. But here we are.

My own history with Linux Journal began when Phil Hughes pulled me into an email discussion of his plan to start a free software magazine. That was in 1993: twenty-four years ago. Phil ended that discussion when he announced, to everyone else’s surprise, that he had found this kid who had written a new version of UNIX that would likely take over the world. The kid was Linus Torvalds and his operating system was called Linux. I thought, what? But, as he was about so many things, Phil was right. Our first issue came out in April 1994, when Linux hit version 1.0. Linux Journal’s editor for that issue Bob Young, who left shortly after that to start Red Hat and much else. (I once asked Bob—by then a billionaire but no less a great guy—if Phil actually taught Bob how to spell Linux. Bob said yes.)

I first appeared on the masthead in 1996, and I haven’t left it since 1998. For many years I wrote the “Linux for Suits” column, and for many after that “EOF,” which ran inside the back cover. I also wrote a newsletter called “Suitwatch” and a spin-off blog called IT Garage (which you can still find at that link in the Internet Archive). I was the least technical of all Linux Journal‘s editors, but readers mostly seemed to appreciate my elevated but devoted perspective on Linux’s role in the world.

There were heady times in that history. Linux Journal succeeded fast, got fat during the dot-com craze in the late ’90s, and managed to survive the crash when many other rags went down. Remember Upside? Red Herring? The original FastCompany? (Tip your hat to Brewster Kahle and friends for the fossils of those you’ll still find in the Internet Archive.)

We can thank resourceful management and devoted subscribers for our persistence. And, of course, Linux itself. Today all 500 of the world’s top supercomputers run Linux. Since Android is built on Linux, most of the world’s smartphones run on Linux. Name a giant tech company (e.g. Google, Amazon, Akamai) and chances are the services it deploys run on Linux too. Month after month, Netcraft‘s Most Reliable Hosting Company Sites lists are either all-Linux or close enough. Linux is also embedded in countless devices, from clocks to wi-fi routers to flat-screen TVs.

In its own small but significant way, Linux Journal helped make that happen. Wish it could keep doing that, but alas.

So a hearty thanks to everyone who helped us through all those years. It’s been great, and will remain so.

Now, in hope that other publications might be saved, here are some of the posts and essays I’ve written toward that goal—and toward saving the advertising business from itself as well:

1. Without aligning incentives, we can’t kill fake news or save journalism (15 September 2017 in Medium)
2. An easy fix for a broken advertising system (12 October 2017 in Medium and in my blog)
3. Let’s get some things straight about publishing and advertising (9 September 2017 and the same day in Medium)
4. Good news for publishers and advertisers fearing the GDPR (3 September in ProjectVRM and 7 October in Medium).
5. Publishers’ and advertisers’ rights end at a browser’s front door (17 June 2017 in Medium). It updates one of the 2015 blog posts below.
6. How to plug the publishing revenue drain (9 June 2017 in Medium). It expands on the opening (#publishing) section of my Daily Tab for that date.
7. Customertech Will Turn the Online Marketplace Into a Marvel-Like Universe in Which All of Us are Enhanced (29 May 2017 at ProjectVRM and in Medium)
8. What if businesses agreed to customers’ terms and conditions? (28 April 2017)
9. How are ad blockers affecting journalism? (My answer to a Quora question on 27 April 2017)
10. The only way customers come first (26 April 2017 in Customer Commons)
11. Brands need to fire adtech (23 March, and 25 March in Medium)
12. The Problem with Content (1 March 2017 in Linux Journal)
13. The Next Revolution in Advertising Will Be One Customers Lead (7 February 2017 in Medium)
14. How True Advertising Can Save Journalism From Drowning in a Sea of Content (22 January 2017 in Medium and 26 January 2017 in my blog.)
15. The problem for people isn’t advertising, and the problem for advertising isn’t blocking. The problem for both is tracking.(21 October 2016 and same date in Medium).
16. It’s People vs. Advertising, not Publishers vs. Adblockers (26 August 2016 in ProjectVRM and 27 August 2016 in Medium)
17. The cash model of customer experience (17 August 2016 and 18 August 2016 in Medium).
18. If it weren’t for retargeting, we might not have adblocking (13 August 2016 in ProjectVRM and 15 August 2016 in Medium)
19. The Castle Doctrine (19 June 2016 in ProjectVRM, and in Medium)
20. Why #NoStalking is a good deal for publishers (11 May 2016, and in Medium)
21. An invitation to settle matters with @Forbes, @Wired and other publishers (15 April 2016 and in Medium)
22. TV Viewers to Madison Avenue: Please quit driving drunk on digital (14 Aprl 2016, and in Medium)
23. The End of Internet Advertising as We’ve Known It(11 December 2015 in MIT Technology Review)
24. Ad Blockers and the Next Chapter of the Internet (5 November in Harvard Business Review)
25. How the Big Data Craze Will Play Out (1 November 2015 in Linux Journal)
26. How #adblocking matures from #NoAds to #SafeAds (22 October 2015)
27. Helping publishers and advertisers move past the ad blockade (11 October on the ProjectVRM blog)
28. Dealing with Boundary Issues (1 October 2015 in Linux Journal)
29. Beyond ad blocking — the biggest boycott in human history (28 Septemper 2015)
30. A way to peace in the adblock war (21 September 2015, on the ProjectVRM blog)
31. How adtech, not ad blocking, breaks the social contract (23 September 2015)
32. Debugging adtext assumptions (18 September 2015)
33. Separating advertising’s wheat and chaff (12 August 2015, and on 2 July 2016 in an updated version in Medium)
34. On taking personalized ads personally (27 March 2015)
35. Thoughts on tracking based advertising (18 February 2015)
36. On marketing’s terminal addiction to data fracking and bad guesswork (10 January 2015)
37. Privacy is personal (2 July 2014 in Linux Journal)
38. What the ad biz needs is to exorcize direct marketing (6 October 2013)