I’ve been quietly lobbying Linux Weekly News to offer a $500 – $1000 “Supporter”-level subscription option; LWN has saved my sanity for the last two years as my conference schedule has been severely restricted.
But one problem with LWN is that they spend all their time writing and editing quality articles, instead of the boring stuff: ie. taking money from people. The base rate finally increased this year after 8 years at $5/month (to $7), but I worry that Jon and co will look back at the years of service and lack of retirement savings and wish they’d had secure well-paying jobs like the rest of us.
After numerous monthly reminder emails and face-to-face lobbying at LinuxCon Japan, I’m giving up on “quietly” and asking your for your help. Please: next time you comment on LWN, could you add some sig-line lobbying for the Supporter-level subscription? Even if you have no intention of ever buying such a thing, at least you know one person will…
What Do We Want? LWN Supporter Subscription!
When Do We Want it? Before LCA 2011!
LWN is by far the best quality source of news about Linux and the wider open source eco-system. I do my best to encourage any company I work for to buy corporate subscriptions to help support them.
I’m happy to support your idea (although I’m afraid I shall be sticking to the professional hacker subscription).
Rusty, what keeps you (and other “we”s in the “we want …”) from privately paypaling Jon some extra cash?
Two things: (1) a subscription is tax deductable, and (2) convincing Jon to add the option so others can use it is probably more effective than me just doing it.
+1!
So take the $1000, discount it by your tax rate so it would be the same cost to you as if it were tax deductable, and send Jon a check for that amount and a nice letter explaining that it comes with one condition: that lwn.net offer said “supporter” subscription level.
If that doesn’t work, double the offer next year.
You know, it might come to that, if this fails.
And I should have noted that Jon mentioned that I was not the first to ask for this, so that’s why I believe it’s worth lobbying for this as a general feature rather than a once-off.
Cheers,
Rusty.
Since you’ve already discussed this with Jon, what were his reasons not to do it ? Lack of time to implement it ?
Regards
It’s all about lack of time, nothing else. Thus I am treading this line between persistence and annoyance :)
Order a group subscription and you can pay whatever amount you feel like.
Have you considered a Bronze or Silver corporate subscription?