Episode: 1917
Title: HPR1917: OpenSource.com
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1917/hpr1917.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 11:07:00

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This is HPR episode 1917 entitled Open Source.com and is part of the series, Interviews.
It is hosted by Klaatu and is about 15 minutes long.
The summary is, Klaatu Interviews begin to slip from Open Source.com.
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Hi everyone, this is Klaatu and I'm at the All Things Open conference with Ricky Inzli.
He is the, I guess, not the managing editor of Open Source.com.
I am one of the community managers.
Yes.
And so I do, yes, I do editing also, but Gen Y Cougar is our content manager which is really like a managing editor.
So tell me what is Open Source.com.
It's a community site.
It's supported by Red Hat, but the content is actually contributed by the community.
We shoot for having at least 65% of the content every month contributed by non-Red Haters.
We have a pretty small staff on site and then we have about 20 moderators, community moderators
that are located around the world and they help contribute a good chunk of the articles.
Usually between 25% and 30% or 35% and then they help us find different writers.
You know, we're always looking for new writers and then we have a lot of people who love the experience so much
they come back for more and they continue contributing.
What kind of stuff gets posted on Open Source.com?
I mean, we're talking breaking news stories, cross posts from slash dot or what is this?
We don't do a lot of breaking news.
Occasionally we will do somewhat breaking news if one of us is at an event and gets a scoop
and we are able to post it fast enough, but generally they are updates to projects or announcements about projects
or personal stories about how Open Source technologies, software, hardware, more methodologies are being used
in different communities around the world.
One of the articles I remember really well is the, and I think it was like one of the top articles for a long time,
on what like nine things that this guy, the author, loved about KDE.
So I mean, it seems like there are some, I guess I would say opinion pieces.
Like how does that fit into the rest of the stuff?
Yes, anytime we have an opinion piece though, we do want it to be pretty practical.
For example, that one, you know, we also try to find a matching article about Gnome because Gnome is very popular
but nobody was wanting to write that article apparently for a while.
But, you know, we wanted to know why he liked KDE and so it wasn't.
We wouldn't run an opinion piece that's not backed up with why somebody prefers something or why somebody uses something.
We want, you know, to help people who are new to Open Source or experimenting with Open Source to find out more about some of the technologies.
Writing is sometimes just considered kind of intimidating and difficult, especially if that's not kind of what you think of yourself as doing.
Absolutely, very few of our writers are professional writers or very experienced writers even.
We actually have published quite a few pieces that are the first time people have been published, you know.
And maybe they weren't even expecting to write and we've reached out and requested articles.
We, Gn and Alex Sanchez and Jason Baker and Jason Hibits and Brian and I all kind of share the load of helping different people, their articles.
We all have different strengths also in different areas of interest.
So we, you know, we will work one on one or a couple of us will work with different writers and help them, you know, give them feedback on their articles or help them come up with a better outline, you know, and do revisions and then send it back so that they can do another round of revisions or see what we've done.
And so they still have, you know, final say on whether or not they like what we've done with their article.
And that's actually one of the, we did a poll with some of our writers a few months ago and asked people, why do you like writing for us?
Because we just wanted that feedback, you know, because what we thought we were doing and, you know, what people were getting out of it, we wanted to make sure those aligned.
And I was surprised to see how many people said they liked writing for us because it had given them more confidence and it had improved their writing quite a bit.
Some people said it helped them get jobs, you know, or it helped them have the confidence to submit articles to other publications or to, you know, write more for their own blogs too.
Yeah, I mean, it kind of, it's funny because that's one complaint I sense that people get a lot about sort of getting into open source at all.
Like not opensource.com, like open source the thing is that they don't have, you know, they kind of want a little bit more hand holding than what is usually available.
And it sounds like open source.com is kind of like, I mean, it's contributing to open source in the sense that you're writing about open source, you know, distributing ideas.
And it sounds like there's a little bit of guidance there.
Yes, and I think that, you know, we try to get back to people really fast, you know, we try to get back to them within a couple of business days, you know, and on the long end would be maybe, you know, five business days, which in my experience is ridiculously fast for publication.
I've submitted proposals and never, ever heard back from editors before or six weeks or whatever, you know, and so we really try to, you know, help people have the confidence, you know, we work with a lot of non-native English speakers too.
And that could be, you know, a barrier for a lot of people writing for English publications, you know, and so we're able to, you know, localize their texts and a back so that they sound like anybody else who's writing for us, but we try to keep their voice still and their message, you know.
And then again, they have the option to make sure we haven't changed their meaning by reviewing it again.
But yeah, we definitely want to be, you know, good entry point into open source.
I launched a documentation column this year, for example, and it's a community column that anyone can contribute to.
And often documentation is a way that people can get into different open source projects, right?
Because if they don't have the confidence or the skills yet to contribute on different in different areas, documentation always needs improvements and updates.
And so that's a really good way to get them involved with communities and so they can learn from these articles we're doing or they can, you know, submit their own.
So looking at it from the flip side, how do you as a publication kind of avoid?
Like, I mean, I would think with sort of an open submission policy like that that you get sort of thinly veiled like marketing spills, or does that not really happen?
Or how do you protect against that as a, as a thinly veiled at all?
Most of them are quite obvious.
And when I worked, you know, at four profit publications, we had a policy of not working with the third party submissions.
We wanted to work directly with the developer, you know, or product manager or whatever.
And we did not want to work with anyone in marketing because it did require a lot of work on our end, you know, to go in and make it be an interesting article as opposed to marketing piece.
On open source.com, however, we will work with marketing people.
And we are just honest and send it back.
And we'll say this has way too much marketing in it.
Here's the part that's interesting to our readers.
If you can expand on this, you know, we're all even sending out line.
Like if, you know, the first part of the article include this, do this part in the middle.
Make sure that you cover this and at the end tell us how to get involved with your community.
And so we actually have quite a few people with marketing backgrounds who are writing for us.
Because once they understand that, I mean, it's a wonderful fit because they are doing their jobs.
They're marketing whatever they're on.
They are working well with us.
We're getting the cool story because people actually want to know about these products and projects, you know, and technologies.
But they just don't want to have to read the marketing speak that's involved.
Right.
So it's actually probably a good way for a, certainly an open, like a small open source project.
This would be actually a really effective way to, I mean, not market, but at the same time.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And also, or anybody who needs help, you know, with marketing or documentation, because we don't, we don't control the content.
You know, we're going to go ahead and provide editorial services and social media services about the contents under Creative Commons license on our site.
You know, unless an author has worked with us to have a different license, we prefer to have a Creative Commons license so that the author can be used the content on their own blog or their, you know, their company site or however they want to use it.
I think it'd be great if you had a documentation column about video editing, like as a feature, maybe on a monthly basis.
I think that would be amazing.
That would be so amazing.
Do you know the right person for that?
I might.
I'll have to contact him.
I personally know your background because I've known you for a couple of years.
What is your background with writing and sort of the magazine or the publication market?
When I was young, I wanted to be a writer.
And you know, possibly work on magazines, maybe a rock and roll magazine or something.
But I accidentally got started on Sissabman magazine quite a few years ago.
And I thought that would just be, you know, my first editing job.
But I really fell in love with the community.
At first, it was Unix Sissabmans.
And then we expanded into Linux Sissabmans also.
And so it became, you know, I was working with my friends at that point.
And so I wasn't going to leave, you know.
And so I did that for around 10 years.
And then I moved to Linux to media.
And worked on Linux Pro magazine and Ubuntu user, which we launched there.
And admin magazine and some special publications.
And then after that, I switched to writing and did a bunch of freelance writing for different online tech magazines.
And I worked as a community manager for Usnix.
That's so cool.
Yeah, I love that group.
And I worked with them a lot when we were at Sissabman magazine.
And so I really liked that group.
And I liked Login magazine, which is, you know, their magazine.
And so I was a managing editor of it.
And it's a magazine I've always respected.
You know, so I enjoyed being part of it.
And then more recently, you know, I came over to Red Hat.
And after about a year at Red Hat working with the open source and standards team doing social media.
And helping them with their blogging and their outreach.
I moved over to open source.com.
So this is actually my first publishing role that's not really in publishing, you know,
where it's a sponsored site, which is in one way the future of publishing.
I don't think that print is going away.
I think it's evolved.
And along with print, I love print.
But this was a model I hadn't tried before.
And so I'm really enjoying it and get to work with a different set of people.
Get to cover the same kinds of technologies and communities, but under a different model.
So it's been fun.
It seems like a good fit for you because I'm always seeing you at conferences.
So it seems like for someone who was in print for so long, you were strangely visible, you know,
it felt like you should be sort of like, I don't know, online where everyone could sort of reach your work.
Right, yeah, no, it's been fun.
I'm a people person, I guess.
And then I also need an MAMA mix of introvert and extrovert, I guess, you know, because I'm a people person.
And then I need my reach charge time.
And that's where I, you know, hold up and write my articles or do some editing.
And then I get energized again when I go out, you know, and get a Venn and me people 101.
Yeah.
So how do potential authors, well, first of all, so you've got RSS feeds and stuff like that, right?
I mean, what's the way that people consume your articles?
Do you find like what, what are you seeing people doing?
How do people read your articles?
Or do they have open source.com articles?
Well, RSS feeds obviously are a big one, like you said.
And then people find out about them on social media, you know, word of mouth.
We're very active on Twitter and G plus and Twitter handle.
And open source way.
Okay.
We're on G plus and Facebook.
And we just launched an Instagram account.
And then we also have a free node, open source.com channel.
And so I love its word of mouth and Twitter.
And then we, I'm sorry, the free node channel is, it is literally opensource.com.
Yeah, yeah.
Which I didn't know you could do.
I didn't know you could do that.
Apparently you can, because that is increasingly active.
Now it wasn't reactive a few months ago when I started on the publication.
I had, I was never a fan of IRC when I was in publishing, you know, but then when I was on that,
open source and standards team at Red Hat, I was on it all the time because I was working with all the developers, right?
Yeah.
And so when I came to open source.com, I said we really have to be more active.
Yeah.
You know, because we want to be where the people are, you know, and so that's why we're trying to be everywhere.
You know, there are some areas that we just don't have the bandwidth.
Like, you know, we launched a Pinterest site and a Flickr site, but we just don't have the bandwidth
and the audience to maintain as much as some of the other ones.
So do you feel like your team sort of does like sort of the promotion of the site
and then the community contributes to the articles or is it not that divided?
Like, what do you think the balance of contribution is?
And with content or...
Well, that's what I mean, like both.
Like I mean content plus like sort of maintaining the site as a thing.
It's really both, you know, because in fact we had a meeting one time and we were talking about something on the site.
And I remember someone in the team asked, are we a community or are we a publication?
And I said yes.
Yeah.
You know, and I think we are equally a community and a publication and that's what we're going for.
And so we participate also in writing articles, you know, very close relationships with many of our writers.
We also work with our writers making suggestions on how they can help promote their content too,
because obviously they want it to do well and reach the people they're trying to reach.
Right.
It's a little both.
And that is good, I guess, because it is a very...
I mean, opensource.com, first of all, is a great domain.
I mean, that's just like a really good domain.
Like the best, yeah.
That's kind of like the ideal.
And then so if people publish their stuff on that site, then they can basically refer anyone from any community to their article.
And it's pretty legit.
Right.
Yeah, in the sense, because it is people are mixing from different communities and finding out about, you know, different projects.
And so that's kind of a melting pot, you know.
How would people, if they want to contribute an article or even just pitch an idea to see if it could be an article?
How would they go about that?
Again, we try to be wherever the people are.
And so we're pretty flexible.
And we have people who will shoot us an idea on Twitter, you know, or leave a comment on g-plus or Facebook.
Then we also have an email address open at opensource.com.
And all of the editors are copied on that.
And so one of us, or multiple ones of us, will reply, you know, with feedback.
And then we also have a web form on the site.
And that, it used to just be people who shot an email.
But we expanded the web form to kind of walk people through the process.
You tell us a few things about your background and what is your relationship with the topic that you're writing about.
You know, are you, did you launch it?
Are you contributing to it? Is it just something you'd like?
And then a brief outline of what you plan to write about.
So we kind of have an idea and can help them.
You know, if we don't, sometimes, you know, we'll say, well, that's not going to do well on our site.
But then we've seen with other articles, you know, if you tweak it this way, you're more likely to have readers.
And so we can work with writers that way.
Thanks a lot for talking to me about opensource.com, Ricky.
Well, thank you. I appreciate it. It was fun, as always.
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