LinuxQuestions.org Turns 9

It was nine years ago today that I made my very first post at LQ. 3,578,611 posts and 407,152 members (note: we prune inactive members – more than 480,000 members have signed up) later, I continue to be astounded by what LQ has become. As I’ve stated many times, the site has grown well beyond my initial expectations. If you’d have told me in 2000 that I’d be traveling around the world, from London to San Francisco, evangelizing Linux and Open Source on behalf of LQ… well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have believed you. I started LQ as a way to give something back to a community that I felt had given to me. I wanted LQ to be a place that was friendly and welcoming to those who were new to Open Source and Linux. Despite our ever growing size, I think we’ve maintained that objective. With an absolutely great group of members and the best mod team on the net, we’ve only just begun however. From the very beginning, LQ has thrived on member feedback. That will never change. Visit this LQ thread to let us know how you think we’re doing. We want to know what we’re doing well and where we can improve. We really do listen closely to feedback and many of the improvements we’ve made over the years were direct responses to member suggestions. I’d like to once again thank each and every LQ member. It really is the members that make the site what it is. Here’s to another nine years!

–jeremy

Random stat: In our ninth year on the net, well over 25,000,000 unique visitors came to LQ.

Win a Gratis OSCON Pass from LQ

I’m happy to announce that we’re able to give one full “Sessions Only” pass to OSCON away absolutely free. For those of you who’ve never attended OSCON, it’s always a great event. While the event is in San Jose and not Portland this year, I still expect a top notch showing from O’Reilly. At almost $1,500 the “Sessions Only” pass will get you into everything except for the tutorials. Visit this LQ thread for more information on how to be eligible for the free pass. I’d like to thank O’Reilly for making this possible. See you in San Jose.

–jeremy

Wikipedia changes its license

(via David A. Wheeler) The proposed change that the copyright licensing terms on the wikis operated by the WMF – including Wikipedia, be changed to include the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) license in addition to the current GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) has been approved. From the official results:

If “no opinion” votes are not included, the Yes/No percentage becomes 87.9%/12.1% (15071 votes).

This impacts us at LQ due to its implications to the LQ Wiki. We recognized the desire to license content CC-BY-SA some time ago and added that as an additional option as a result. With this Wikipedia change it’s likely we’ll do the research needed to offer the same dual licensing option that the WMF now offers. Stay tuned.

–jeremy

LQ Social Networking Update

While LQ has been on the various social networks since the beginning, we’re finally starting to use them all regularly. If you’re not already following LQ, here are the relevant links.

Twitter: @linuxquestions
identi.ca: @linuxquestions
Facebook: @linuxquestions

We should have a Facebook app coming soon. If there’s something specific you’d like to see, let us know.

–jeremy

Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit

I’m in San Francisco for the 3rd annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. I wasn’t able to attend the event last year, but I was at the introductory Summit and really enjoyed it. I know this blog has been quiet in the recent past, but posting frequency should return to normal moving forward.

–jeremy

Headed to SCaLE 7X

I’ll be heading to Los Angeles for the weekend to attend the Southern California Linux Expo. I’ve tried to make SCaLE a yearly trip and it’s one of my favorite Linux conferences. If you’ll be anywhere near LA February 20-22, I encourage you to stop by the Westin LAX. If you do make it to SCaLE, be sure to stop by the dotorg section of the expo floor and visit the LQ booth (#35). See you in sunny southern California.

–jeremy

Random LQ stats – Browser and OS 2008

I like to post random LQ stats every once and a while, and here are the browser and OS statistics for the main LQ site for all of 2008.

Browsers
Firefox 64.44%
Internet Explorer 21.48%
Mozilla 4.97%
Opera 4.09%
Safari 2.20%
Konqueror 1.58%

It’s interesting to me that Firefox versions are all over the place, with no single version having over 14%. The top 5 are: 3.0.1, 3.0, 3.0.3, 2.0.0.14 and 2.0.0.12.

Operating Systems
Windows 53.23%
Linux 41.59%
Macintosh 4.38%

–jeremy

The Art Of Community

I just came across the announcement that Jono will be releasing a new O’Reilly book called Art Of Community.

Today I am proud as punch to announce the Art Of Community.

A while back I was approached by Andy Oram, a senior editor at O’Reilly to write a definitive book about how to grow, build and energise a community. This book will be called the Art Of Community.

The book covers a wide range of topics designed to build strong community. This includes the structure and social economy behind community, building effective and easy to use infrastructure, setting up community processes, creating buzz and excitement, governance, conflict resolution, scalability and more.

This book is much more than merely a textbook on building a compelling community. I believe that we learn how to build strong community through the exchange of stories and experiences. We all have great insight into community. These stories are illustrative vessels for important lessons and subtleties in how great communities work. The Art Of Community is a compendium of stories, anecdotes and experiences inside and outside the Open Source world.

Congrats to Jono and O’Reilly on an idea that I think has a ton of potential. As someone who runs a little community myself, the content of both the book and the website are something I’ll keep a close eye on. One thing I’ve learned about community is that the rules are always changing; you always have new things to learn, new ideas to implement and places to improve. I think that’s one of the reasons that after over 8 1/2 years of running LQ, I remain as excited and dedicated as the day I started it.

There’s one other part of the announcement I think is of note:

The release of Art Of Community is actually rather exciting. The book will be available in two forms.

* Firstly, there will be a normal printed copy available to buy. This will be available from the usual places you can buy O’Reilly books.
* Secondly, The book will also be available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license. This provides everyone with the opportunity to share, modify and re-use the content.

Fantastic!

–jeremy

Voting for the 2008 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards is Now Open

It’s that time once again. Voting for the 2008 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards is now open. The Members Choice Awards allow the Linux community to select their favorite products in a variety of categories. This is now the eighth year we’ve done the MCA’s, and we try to improve the polls every year. It involves striking a tough balance between having too many awards and having nominees in certain categories that quite simply are not directly comparable. There are 26 categories this year, and as always we’re open to feedback on how we can improve next year. We always pre-announce the categories to get feedback and then post the nominees a few days before the polls open, to ensure we can add any apps we may have missed. Congratulations to all those who were nominated and good luck! The polls will close on February 12th. Vote Now!

–jeremy

Happy New Year – 2009!

On behalf of myself and LinuxQuestions.org I’d like to wish everyone a very happy new year. As the year comes to an end, it’s a great time to reflect on the year that passed and look forward to the year ahead. 2008 was another great year for LQ. We continue to roll out additional features a new functionality, while staying true to our core goals. This year we added almost 70,000 new members and over 400,000 new posts to the site. LQ ISO has now facilitated over 7.5 Million Linux downloads. I’m happy to report that in 2009 we have plans that should provide continued growth and further stability. We remain committed to remaining one of the friendliest and most active Linux communities on the web. It’s been a wild 8 and a half years – here’s to another great one.

I’d also like to take this time to thank each and every LQ member. You are what make the site great.

–jeremy