OSAlert is looking for editors and writers to help with posting daily news, writing feature articles, research and investigative journalism, doing interviews, covering events and conferences, writing product and book reviews, doing editorials, and all around increasing the amount of original content published at OSAlert. If you are an OS enthusiast and have experience in journalism, blogging, editing, or other writing, please contact David Adams.
Paid work?
Yes, you will get 3 jelly beans a day. NO MORE!
I doubt it. The osnews staff has repeatedly made clear (with a certain amount of hostility I might add) that:
1.) They don’t want to pay people for contributions. Apparently the editors aren’t even being paid.
2.) They don’t want to release any financial information.
Personally, I find it somewhat astounding that a for profit company is soliciting donations at all. If osnews was an NPO, I’d have no problem with it, but they aren’t. Where’s the money going? Would I be spending time writing articles to fund someone’s big screen tv? (my guess is that I wouldn’t, but without any financial information how can I be sure?)
If your cynicism is that deeply embedded, then don’t. Don’t comment on this article, don’t even use the site. If anything you’ve already proven that you wouldn’t make a good editor with an attitude like that.
There are plenty of others who don’t see this as a matter of money, and see it as an opportunity for greater things like furthering their skills and bringing joy to readers who are genuinely interested in the art of computing.
I don’t know why you got modded down. It seems like a perfectly reasonable response to me. Much like open source, we contribute articles here.
The profit of the site is intended to cover bandwidth, network administration (backups, DNS, etc), hardware and servers, and administrative stuff. OSAlert is certainly not the first site to do so and most definitely won’t be the last.
Anyone who has ever written a post on IMDB or Netfix, written a book review for Slashdot, etc, has contributed to someone else’s profit too, but I don’t hear the whining there.
However, the free MacBook Pro every two months and the use of the company Ferrari helps.
Dude, you’re totally off the mark there. We don’t ever get presents like that, and we sure don’t get a car like that. Come on man, sheesh, lame flamer.
Ferrari, pshhh. We have an Aston Martin.
Well guys, I guess this post sort of constitutes “financial disclosure”.
You have to wait TWO MONTHS for your new MBP? Sucker. I get a new one every 2 weeks and use the old ones as step ladders around the house.
When OSAlert staff shut down a computer, it goes in the bin and a new one used for next time.
OSAlert runs on Windows?
“Help! help! I’m being repressed!”
Meh, I don’t mind. The replies to the thread were only ever going to be complaints, and people with a grudge to bear. Anybody who took it to heart to contribute would have just sent an email as asked rather than bothering to reply to the thread.
“Come see the violence inherent to the system!”
Make sure it’s plasma and not LCD or Eugenia will moan for days on end.
What money!? The money from the ads!? Everyone in here uses adblock extensions. They can’t possibly earn money. Having nonprofit writers is much better – in that way OSAlert can keep on being free and independent.
I dunno. I have Adblock plus installed but I never ever use it…
somehow I just manage to totally ignore pretty much any ad.. I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly clicked on one!
I have clients who run very small, very niche sites who make a pretty decent amount of money from ad revenue – i.e. several 1000s a month.. these are low volume, very niche sites too… But hey, we’re all geeks here, so maybe we just don’t click ads as much as other gullible people do?
Editors? What editors? I’ve given up asking Eugenia to get somebody to proofread her English.
As for a for profit company taking donations – who cares? The only difference if they were a NPO would be that you could get a tax deduction for your donation – meh.
If you like what they are doing and want to support it – donate. If not, don’t. There is nothing magical about a non-profit that makes it any more financially responsible or accountable.
This is an area of debate amongst freelance writers — should people do unpaid work?
I see both sides of the argument. People working for free decreases the demand for paid work. I have no doubt that some publishers would start paying for work or pay more than they already do if the pool of unpaid workers were smaller. This is particularly true in the music press, for example.
On the other hand, most professions have a concept of internship. I had seven articles published on OS News before I started going after paid writing work. I was happy to do the work and I feel that I benefited from it. Getting my work in front of an audience and receiving feedback for it was a valuable part of the learning experience.
Apart from anything else, you need a portfolio of published work to make reference to in order to go after other work.
As long as you are getting something out of it — such as building your profile as a writer, or developing your skill set — unpaid work has its place, in my opinion. Naturally, the people who get to read your stuff are getting something out of the situation too.
As with most things, I think that a good balance needs to be found.
You’re right! ZOMG OH NOES! Now that you mention it, I’ve never seen any documentation proving that OSAlert staff don’t regularly dump babies into woodchippers. Not that there’s a single shred of evidence that they do – but I’m completely justified in assuming it (since they haven’t explicitly stated otherwise).
I really would like to,
but OSAlert is so unfriendly
to Lynx users that it
is hard to look at pictures
(yes Lynx can do that),
post comments, etc.
and if you change the
user agent to use the
M*zilla compatible page,
stuff looks weird.
Browser: Mozilla/2.8.7dev.8-MirOS (compatible; MirBSD; UNIX) libwww-FM/2.14 SSL-MM/1.4.1 OpenSSL/0.9.7m
Or you could just look at the bottom of the mobile page and click that link to give you the full version.
What types of news do and don’t fall under osnews? In other words what are the criteria for deciding if certain news will be published or not on osnews? Does it have to be about OS’s?
Great, but don’t hire the guy who wanted to tell everyone why he won’t be getting an iPod. Same guy who wrote that he was glad that ‘IBM Declined to Release the OS/2 Source’. His articles sound to personal, like they were originally written for his blog, but he decided to send them to OS news just ‘for a laugh’ to see if they would get published.
Hey, it was about why I won’t buy an iPhone
Thanks for your continued support.
a piece on why I use the distribution that I do. Not because I feel I am all that special, but I do on occasion go on a ‘distro shopping spree’, so to speak.
That and I’ve had several people ask me the what and the why for of which distribution I use.
Also for work purposes, I’m sure it’d help someone out there wanting to know which is easiest for installation, maintenance, etc.
Well… it’s not that I’m lazy, I just don’t care. No, honestly, I would like to contribute with some articles (UNIX topics and mainframe stuff, as you can surely imagine), but I don’t think my English is good enough for this. Furthermore, I don’t think OSAlert is a suitable platform to publish articles that would better be placed into HOWTO-like discussion boards or scientific papers. Reviews always include the risk to start a flame war “which distro is better” or “Linux isn’t ready” or “mine is longer than yours”, and I think discussions reveal that there are enough topics of this kind. Call me stupid, but I do prefer OSAlert articles that are more of a technical or scientifical nature (e. g. Thom’s usability topics, for the last kind), I don’t read the “average user in focus” that intensive because… I don’t care.
Your English doesn’t have to be perfect
Heck, 99% of native English speakers can’t use it correctly…
Dont let that put you off, judging by all your past posts, you have an excellent grasp of the English language, and its grammer.
In recent times, I have found that the quality of articles posted in OSAlert have gone way downward. Or I am getting older.
Too many meanless fan wars, not enouch tech.
PS But if it was the opposite, maybe OSAlert wouldn’t be this popular.
Edited 2008-06-02 15:09 UTC
It’s turned into OSCogs. It’s not enough that lame comic is on the front page – a while ago 8 out of 20 stories on the front page were either written by Thom or submissions of his that were actually mini-editorials stressing his opinion not the story. One further entry was actually submitted by someone else but ruined by Thom’s ranting (it dragged in his Fiona Apple obsession for some reason.)
In b4 “love it or leave it”
Im verry intrsted in this poisition. Im the koolest guy at all the computter stuff, and I rilly like argueing about GPL vs. BSD lisenses and stuff. I think i”ll rite and articel about how kool Ubuntoo is!
Moulinneuf! Is that you?