Free Software Magazine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Free Software Magazine (also known as FSM and originally titled The Open Voice) is a website which produces a (generally bi-monthly) mostly free-content e-zine about free software.
It was started in November 2004 by Australian Tony Mobily, under the auspices of The Open Company Partners, Inc. (based in the United States of America), and carried the subtitle The free magazine for the free software world.
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[edit] History
FSM was originally conceived by its creator as a magazine to be sold in both print and electronic formats, with a higher signal-to-noise ratio than mass-produced print Linux magazines.[1] Under this model, the articles were freely licensed six weeks after the print edition's publication.
However, the high costs of printing and postage resulted in the magazine moving to exclusively electronic publication via the PDF format.
[edit] PDF version history
Initially a print-ready, hand-crafted PDF version was available for download. At Issue 16 (February 2007) this was withdrawn having proven too costly in time and money. The magazine was then no longer available in print copy and initially no alternative PDF version was available.[2] This move sparked a harsh response from some members of the community. From March 2008, PDF and printer friendly version of articles and PDF versions of entire issues were made available to all logged-in users. These PDFs are created automatically using HTMLDOC and omit the styling and presentation of the print-ready ones.
[edit] Content
FSM devotes most of its context to Linux, the GNU Project and free software in general, including articles about software freedom and how it can be protected. The issues have three main sections:
- Power-up
- Non-technical articles about various subjects (interviews, opinions, book reviews, etc.)
- User space
- Articles aimed at end users.
- Hacker's code
- Technical articles about what can be achieved with free software.
There are also regular competitions where readers have a chance of winning free software related books reviewed in the magazine.
Most of the articles are released under a free license (generally a Creative Commons License or GNU Free Documentation License. Some articles are released under a verbatim-copying-only license.
In keeping with the move to more on-line content, FSM has blog-style columns where regular authors write on more political, philosophical and ethical aspects of the free software world, and discuss free software advocacy and community. Finally there is a community posts section which allows registered users to post similar blog-style pieces.
[edit] Free Software Daily
Free Software Daily (FS Daily) was a website originally created by the staff of FSM that posted summaries of articles about free software. At first, it was based on Slash and was similar in nature to Slashdot.org. However, the project died before it could gain momentum. This was mainly because of the huge hardware resources required by Slash and the time constraints of the FSM staff.
The FSM website's blogs somewhat filled the gap that Free Software Daily originally planned to fill. But later, FS Daily came back first as a Pligg based site,[3] and then as a Drigg site. Drigg was developed by Free Software Magazine's editor Tony Mobily specifically for FSDaily. However, Drigg is now available as a standard Drupal module.
Although Free Software Magazine share similar motives and a common root, they are no longer directly connected[4].
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Klemm, Aaron (2005-02-15). "Interview: Tony Mobily, Free Software Magazine". NewsForge.
- ^ Mobily, Tony (2007-02-06). "So, why has the PDF gone?".
- ^ "Free Software Daily is back!" (2007-06-04).
- ^ Guard of FSDaily on FSM & FSD
[edit] External links
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