Linux Journal is back with Slashdot Media

Last year I had to give in Linux Adictos the sad news of the final disappearance of Linux Journal, one of the oldest publications in the Linux world. Fortunately, in a year short of good news, mIt is also time to communicate the pleasant news of her return. From now on it will operate under the umbrella of Slashdot Media.

To understand the importance of the news, we must point out that eWe are talking about the first magazine in the world dedicated to writing about the Linux kernel and the distributions based on it. In the first issue published in March 1994, the editors were Phil Hughes and Bob Young, who in 1993 had been the co-founders of Red Hat, and in it Linus Torvalds was interviewed.

Exactly nine years ago, in September 2011, the magazine was published only in digital format.

The company had been in trouble for years and in 2017 it announced its closure due to lack of money to pay employees and creditors.

At the time, Kyle Rankin, its editor, explained the reasons as follows:

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.

An agreement with an agreement with a VPN service, Private Internet Accesss, allowed the relaunch of the site in 2018. But, it only lasted a year. In 2019 Rankin wrote again.

Unfortunately, we didn't recover quickly enough, and when we realized that we needed to walk on our own, 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?

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.

Linux Journal is back

The folks at Slashdot Media already have a history of bringing back open source related sites. In 2016 they saved SourceForge, which had been the reference site for storing and downloading free software projects until the owners at that time came up with the idea of ​​including third-party software downloads in the installers without consulting the developers. They also operate the news aggregator of the same name.

Regarding Linux Journal, they plan to republish content as soon as possible. At the moment they are looking for contributors who want to cover the news of the Linux world, create tutorials and moderate comments and forums.

According to the statement in the statement, they have no plans to re-float the subscription model ande they will concentrate on publishing content for free. Nowhere does it say if the collaborators are going to charge or volunteer.

Despite the shutdown, at no point did the site go down (although no content was posted after the announcement of the definite shutdown. So there is no reason why the site shouldn't be back online right away.