Save bsd magazine

oliverh said:
>heavily discourage any future projects as mags or books since investing in "BSD stuff just doesn't pay".

Well people usually buy stuff if they need it. So if I want to support BSD, I usually spend some money to the foundation or buy e.g. some cd set from OpenBSD people. Another example: I do have almost any BSD book available, should I buy some of them again to compensate a lack of users? Btw. in Germany we already have got some "BSD mag", freeX. It's of course not BSD-only, but why do you think they're surviving? http://www.cul.de/freex.html

And so do I .. I do buy FreeBSD releases (subscriber), OpenBSD releases and donate money whenever I can and I also have BSD books (although not all of them). Yet still ... if a mag doesn't make it (because we have a limited user base) I have the feeling that the chance to get an updated version of "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System" or "Absolute OpenBSD" or even a whole new book like, say "The OpenBSD Handbook" are _incredibly_low_.

One of the many consequences of such a thing would be the lack of new material to form and train new developers or to satisfy the needs/interests/curiosity of newcomers ... which in turn will probably result in the lack of a newer user base and then .. well.. I take it you can see the loop in there ...

And _no_ .. you don't hace to buy a thing again .. if you did it once, then, you did your share .. I never meant anybody should be flogging a dead horse.
 
vermaden said:
BSD are focused on servers/admin workstations at most (not counting PC-BSD which aims for desktop), newbie articles would be useless in that magazine.

Perhaps there should be a magazine called "BSD Admins Magazine & Bugger The Rest Of You"...

Seriously, whats wrong with articles for end users and newbies too? Do you not want to encourage new BSD admins or users. I'm pretty sure that admins start out as users unless we are now cloning BSD admins :)

I'm glad to see the latest (hopefully not last) issue has an article on how to get a Gnome desktop on FreeBSD and how to build a wireless router as well as the admin stuff etc. A bit more diversity might lead to a wider audience hence more subscriptions and not oblivion.
 
DutchDaemon said:
I don't want to sound too darwinian, here .. but if it's not a viable proposition in its own right (and why would it be if the Internet is rife with useful and up-to-date information), how would a handful of additional subscribers help?

Exactly. Business is business. For whatever reason, this particular (subscription magazine) venture doesn't appear to be viable at the moment. The answer here is to evaluate why that is, and whether it can be overhauled enough to become viable.

Appealing to forums is perhaps fine as a marketing approach, but it appears that something is fundamentally broken. With all due respect to all parties involved, the business model itself should probably be reevaluated.
 
are there any happy readers of that magazine from Russia? i'm asking this because Russian post offices s*ck and always have been unreliable.
does Bsdmag give any warranties the magazines will be delivered properly? at first glance the Bsdmag seems to be interesting and catchy, and i'm planning to subscribe for its printed 4 issues/year for 39.99$. it is a good price for a good zines i guess.
 
placed an order for the paper version a couple of weeks ago and I ordered the current issue as start issue, but i haven't received it yet.
I've sent several emails to the subscription address, but not even a reply.
 
i feel a kind of nostalgia for "old-school" printed magazines.. it is an impressive feeling and i cannot stand it longer. :cool:
 
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