Alternative to Slashdot
Interesting news articles are getting sparser, comments rarely
don't turn into flamewars (and the number of comments that
directly oppose the concept of Free Software itself is
disturbingly big and increasing),
As free software becomes popular for mere practical reasons, among
people who for whom the issue of freedom is not even on the radar
screen, this will tend to happen. The GNU philosophy is not catching
on as much as the GNU/Linux operating system.
To some extent this is natural. It is easier to like a free program
than to accept a controversial political position. But one
contributing factor is the way the GNU philosophy has been detached
from the GNU operating system, by the practice of calling the
operating system "Linux". Many of the people who despise the free
software movement consider themselves strong partisans of "Linux"; if
the boosters of "Linux" understood that the GNU Project played more
than a side role in producing their system, they would not necessarily
have to agree with the GNU philosophy, but fewer of them would come to
despise it. Talking about GNU/Linux is important for this reason,
among others.
But that has only a long-term, slow effect. If you do start an
alternative site, what will you do differently so that what is
happening on Slashdot won't happen to your site too? In the GNU
Project, we created gnu.misc.discuss to channel hostile views into a
place where we could pay no attention to it. Is there a way to adapt
that idea to a web site?
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