Linux Journal announces its final closure

linux-journal ad su definitive closure. It is one of the oldest publications of the Linux world.

In a brief statement on its website you can read:

On August 7, 2019, Linux Journal closed its doors forever. All staff were laid off and the company runs out of operating funds to continue. The website will continue to operate for the next several weeks, hopefully longer for archival purposes if we can make this happen.
-Linux Journal, LLC

A pioneering publication

Linux Journal was the first journal to be published on the Linux kernel and the operating systems based on it. Your first issue came out in March 1994. The editors were none other than Phil Hughes and Bob Young, co-founders of Red Hat, and it featured Linus Torvalds.

As of September 2011 lThe magazine was published only in digital format.

Linux Journal announces its final closure (for the first time)

The company had already had problems and In 2017 it announced its closure due to lack of money to pay debts and salaries. However, an agreement with Private Internet Accesss, a VPN service, allowed its relaunch in 2018.

Kyle Rankin, the editor of Linux Journal, explains what the causes of the second shutdown are.

Unfortunately, we don't recover fast enough, and when we realized that we needed to walk in our own strength, we just couldn't. So here we are taking our second, much more awkward, goodbye. What happens now? We really hugged each other during the first goodbye, did we hug again this time? Do we do the handshake that turns into a one-arm hug? Do we just wave and smile?

He also appreciates the support of the community that they received at the time:

These were difficult times, but we were also inundated with a lot of support from you, our readers. Some people contacted us to tell us how much they liked the magazine and how sorry they were to see how it went. Others offered to pay more for their subscriptions if it helped them in any way. Others contacted us to see if they could develop a fundraising program to keep the magazine alive. I can't stress how much this incredible flow of support helped all of us through this difficult time. Thanks.

I want to highlight something that Kyle wrote at the time of the first closing

My sadness that something I had worked on for ten years had disappeared was replaced by anger that the Linux community seemed to have lost its way. I lost my way. He took Linux and free software for granted. It was clearer to me than ever that While Linux and free software had won the battle against the tech giants a decade earlier, new ones had taken their place in the meantime, and we let them win.. Although I had written and talked about Linux and free software for years, and had used it personally and professionally, I felt that I had not done enough to support this thing that I cared so much about.

Why is Linux Journal announcing its final closure (for the second time)?

As my old statistics professor used to crush, correlation does not imply causation. The Linux Journal closure is probably due more than anything to a change in habits.

Who will pay for a magazine when you can find what you need for free on the internet? And, let's say the truth, if you search well, you can download the magazine you want without paying a single euro. I'm not saying it's okay, I'm saying it's a fact.

But, even if it has nothing to do with the closure, the statement Kyle made in 2017 is still true. The free software community lost its way, and the Microsoft monopoly was replaced by the Google / Apple oligopoly on mobile and Amazon on the cloud.

With the possible exception of Raspberry Pi, the world of open source was not able to generate a project that would excite those who are not consubstantiated with the opensource philosophy. We do not have a WhatsApp or a Facebook. The most we get is an expensive and outdated project like By Libra that can only be sold for ideology.