Re: Adoption of RPG OA

OK, I have to disagree - we (RJS Software) advertise in magazines. We advertise on websites. All of the places we advertise in, they also have articles on open source. We are not upset. We actually use some open source material in our products. And we certainly do not complain to any of the places we advertise in, that they are talking about open source.

You have made a very broad, sweeping dogmatic assertion. It just doesn't hold water universally.

Bottom line, no advertiser has editorial power over content in any magazine that I know of. Certainly not the IBM publications, nor the Penton magazines. This is an open market - you put forth your own offerings and position, others do the same, everyone gets to have their say.

Now if you know a way for us to completely control editorial content in, say, SystemINews - hey, let me know. Actually, don't - it would soon be obvious that what is published is not to be trusted.

Regards
Vern

On 3/12/2011 7:43 AM, Raul A. Jager W. wrote:

I think it is very good to write about a product, be it comercial or
free. The problem is that if a magazine publishes articles about the
benefits of using free products advertizer that sell a comercial version
will not be happy.

Vern Hamberg wrote:

Ah Raul

I think I understand your point of view better. My problem with your
first statement now is, it paints with too wide a brush. It covers
everything. I think it is very hard to tell the difference between the 2
kinds of articles that you describe in your 3rd paragraph here.

Now if you find over time that an author only writes in favor of
something because he or she is paid, then one can make that known.

I have 2 articles on the web, at mcpressonline.com - one I was paid for,
the other my employer paid for (I get a salary but was not paid extra to
do the article, so this doesn't perfectly fit your description). Both
had good information, according to their respective purposes. The one
that was vendor-sponsored was written to present one of our products as
a solution for a problem. That does not necessarily invalidate it,
because it was clearly indicated that it was for a vendor product.

It seems you've been burned. I can wish that were different. I also hope
that not everything you see in a commercial journal will be tagged as
suspect.

Regards
Vern

On 3/12/2011 7:05 AM, Raul A. Jager W. wrote:

I agree, there is nothing wrong in getting paid for writing something,
be that an article or a program.

But I live in one of the most corrupts countries in the world, and it is
sad to see people recomending paid software or books when there are free
alternatives. Just because there is a juicy comision for the
"profesional" giving the advise.

In short: if you do research, and find real benefits in the use of
tobaco, it is ok to write, end even get paid for it, but if you write
about the "benefits" because you get paid it is not.

Vern Hamberg wrote:

Raul

We are talking here about Open Access, not open source - I know that
some poster mentioned the latter, but the thread is not really about
that - except that it is difficult to do open source development with
Open Access for all the reasons we have been stating here.

I also know that it is possible to write an article that is "dependent
on serious, honest profesionals, that will take the time to learn about
the proyects" - even when the author gets paid.

There is nothing wrong with getting paid to write an article about
anything - just as there is nothing wrong with getting paid to do
programming for your employer.

:-X

Regards
Vern

On 3/11/2011 1:25 PM, Raul A. Jager W. wrote:

Open Source is great, but magazines will always go after the money.
No magazine will publish good, realistic articles about open source and
lose the paid advertising.
Open Source is dependent on serious, honest profesionals, that will take
and reject the nice comisions
offered as an incentive to recomend a paid option.
Are we?

Jon Paris wrote:

On Mar 11, 2011, at 10:39 AM, rpg400-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

There is a always another option - Time for us to put our opensource hats on! :-)

And that is where I get really frustrated by the licensing etc. Larry. Magazine articles and Open Source type projects are not likely to proliferate until you know your audience can get their hands on the required software pre-reqs. Right now it is a bit like writing code for a target audience that hasn't got the RPG compiler!


Jon Paris