Linux Journal Goes Public

Think of it as an LRG meeting: a Linux Readers Group get-together.

Or as an excuse to have a LUG breakout meeting at a local restaurant, pub, club or coffee shop.

In any case, the subject is Linux coverage itself. What should we be hearing, and saying, about Linux in our publications that isn't being heard or said well yet?

For example, it's been very interesting to me over the last year that Linux has grown enormously in enterprises, yet most of the rank & file Linux technologists in those enterprises aren't allowed to talk about how they're solving problems for themselves. They may be free to share their hacks with the greater development community, but not the news about those hacks with publications like Linux Journal. As a result, we have to go digging for sources who are willing to talk (often only anonymously) while the mainstream publications continue to cover what we call "vendor sports". Which is fine, but which also perpetuates the common notion that all the world's "solutions" come from suppliers -- when in fact we know they don't.

I wrote about this here and here, for example.

Far as I know, there isn't another publication out there that's trying to see how the Linux world looks primarily from field -- from the demand side that supplies itself -- rather than from the vendors' perspective.

So we're looking for all the help we can get. And give.