[Fsf-friends] Interview: Tony Mobily, Free Software Magazine

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

Download this magazine from freesoftwaremagazine.com

http://entertainment.newsforge.com/entertainment/05/01/27/1829208.shtml?tid=150&tid=5

Interview: Tony Mobily, Free Software Magazine
Tuesday February 15, 2005 (08:00 AM GMT)
By: Aaron Klemm

Free Software Magazine launched last month in electronic format, with a 
print version due in April. Free Software has no central office, and is 
not funded by any venture capitalists with deep pockets. Article topics 
range from an analysis of XML to a discussion about intellectual freedom. 
Segments of Richard Stallman's blog are promised as a regular feature. A 
section of technically-oriented articles covers password management, 
LiveCDs, and programming free software on Mac OS X. The final section 
deals with economic, social, and political issues of free software. We 
spoke with editor-in-chief Tony Mobily about creating FSM and his goals 
for the magazine.

Congratulations on the launch of Free Software Magazine. Who do you see as 
your target audience?

Identifying FSM's audience is a little bit tricky. Free software is not a 
specific product; for example, both Apache and Firefox are free software, 
but they are very different in many respects. The common ground for FSM's 
readers is their love of free software and of freedom in general. The 
magazine is a good way of reinforcing our movement's beliefs, and of 
creating awareness that the freedom we have at the moment might be taken 
away if we don't fight for it. It is also a way of discovering what you 
can do with free software from a technical point of view.

The magazine also targets all those people who confuse free software with 
"shareware" or "freeware." Sadly, that still happens a lot.

FSM is a "free software" magazine. Does the "open source" ideology have a 
place at FSM?

Using Richard Stallman's own words, "The Free Software movement and the 
Open Source movement are like two political camps within the free software 
community". In general, FSM leans towards the Free Software movement, 
which, I feel, gives more recognition to GNU (which, let's remember, 
started it all) and emphasize the importance of freedom. This is why the 
magazine is not just about free software, but also about freedom. The Open 
Source ideology does have a place in FSM, for sure: we are fighting the 
same war, but in different camps, and in different ways!

What are the key features of your business plan? Is FSM a completely 
bootstrapped venture?

Yes -- in fact, we are pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps as we speak. 
:-) The business plan is based on an assumption that would probably only 
work in the free software world: that subscribers are willing to pay a 
higher subscription for a magazine that is:

     # Of a very high standard.
     # Central to our community.
     # Aimed at paying authors good money for free contents (we are not at 
this point yet).
     # Willing to donate ads to free software companies.

Other magazines cost much less than ours -- we charge $6.95. But our aim 
is different. We are not here to make millions. We simply want to give 
free software an authoritative voice people can refer to and quote.

You have offered reduced-price and even free advertising to companies that 
support free software. Are you concerned that will place too high a burden 
on subscribers?

No, because we will hopefully have plenty of paying advertisers. As soon 
as that happens, we will reduce the price of the magazine.

Since delivering a free-as-in-beer printed magazine to subscribers isn't 
feasible, do you see a lesson in the FSM sales model for software 
developers?

To be honest the short answer is no. I think writing software and writing 
magazines (and documentation in general) are very different things. FSM's 
model is basically "subscribers get the newest magazine, non-subscribers 
get six-week-old issues." This works because the delay is not great. 
Applying this principle to software doesn't really work. There are 
security bugs to be fixed, patches to be accepted, and so on.

What I do think, though, is that this model should be followed by other 
magazines and publications. I worked in the magazine industry in Europe 
for five years. The amount of wonderful articles locked away forever is 
just not acceptable. Making articles accessible on a Web site for free (as 
in beer) is not enough. Contents need to be free -- under the GNU Free 
Documentation License, a Creative Commons license, or simply a 
verbatim-copying-only license. That's the only way to ensure that contents 
will stay alive forever -- or at least as long as at least one person 
wants them published.

In Issue 1 of FSM, you describe the technical work involved in creating 
the magazine. Were there unique technical problems using completely Free 
Software to create the first issue?

First of all, a disclaimer: our system is based nearly entirely on free 
software. Unfortunately, there is still one critical component [a VBA 
script for manipulating RTF files] which needs non-free software to run. 
We are planning to fix that soon.

As far as unique technical problems, I must say that, if anything, thanks 
to free software we managed to save phenomenal amounts of time (and 
therefore money). I am not talking about license fees here. I am talking 
about the fact that we generate the magazine's PDF automatically. There is 
no composition involved!

We achieved this thanks to LaTeX and Gianluca Pignalberi, a LaTeX guru and 
university lecturer who decided to invest vast amounts of his time in this 
project. With FSM, the PDF is generated directly from the tex file, which 
is generated from the XML. Gianluca has to check that nothing went wrong 
with the conversion, but mistakes are getting less and less frequent -- 
and once they are fixed, they won't show up ever again!

You use GIF files on the FSM website and JPEG files in the print version 
of FSM. Are there plans to use the W3C-endorsed PNG file format, which has 
no history of patent problems?

GIF was a choice that happened nearly by accident. In fact, it was 
thoughtlessness on my side. Now, many automatic scripts are based on the 
assumption that we have GIF files there. JPEG was used for a similar 
reason. We are looking into converting all the images to PNG, but it will 
take time.

It's a typical example of the mistakes you can make when you start fresh, 
even if you are a freedom advocate. There are a million things to do, and 
by the end of the month you've made one or two mistakes which you really 
shouldn't have made, and that will take quite some time to fix.

Is it difficult to find authors who want to write about free software and 
related issues?

Finding good authors in any field is not easy. Finding reliable authors is 
very hard. Finding good, reliable authors who are willing to write for 
free (even as a temporary arrangement) can be really quite tricky!

Again, I was amazed by the number of amazing authors I found right at the 
beginning of this adventure. I am talking about people who write articles 
which make a difference, change people's minds, or explain something in 
the most brilliant way.

How will you ensure the quality of the articles remains high?

Some authors will hand in an article, and you think, "If every author were 
like this, I wouldn't need editors." But they are the exceptions. Several 
authors need [three or four] steps in the editing cycle.

Some of the published articles have been edited really heavily, changed, 
improved, discussed. I believe that's what makes the difference. A 
magazine is not a blog: each article needs to be sharp, well-edited, aimed 
at a specific audience. That's a lot of work and we are willing to do it.

What are your plans for compensating authors?
We can pay authors when we have at least 1,300 subscribers and a few 
paying advertisers. We are working on both these things. I believe we will 
be able to pay authors from issue 5 onwards, but it could be a little 
later (if no ads are sold, and subscriptions are slow), as it could be a 
little earlier (if people buy ads, and subscriptions are going OK).

Not paying authors really, really bothers me. I will never, ever say "your 
payment is the honour of writing for us and be published." I don't think 
that's the way you run a business. I will pay authors before I pay myself 
-- that's a promise.

How does the future look for FSM? What are your long-term goals for the 
magazine?

Right now, the future of Free Software magazine depends on its 
subscribers, and subscriptions are coming. We need about 300 subscribers 
by March 12 not to lose money, and we are slowly but steadily getting 
there.

The long-term goal? Well, I have several. The primary goal is to turn Free 
Software Magazine into the most important magazine in the free software 
world. I want it to become the authoritative voice of our movement, a 
publication that everybody in the IT world knows and respects.

I would also love to be able to drop the subscription prices, which at the 
moment are far too high. We will be able to do that as soon as we get more 
subscribers and advertising.

How can people subscribe and what is the subscription price?

There are several options. You can pay by credit card (monthly, six 
monthly or yearly) or by (American) cheque. The magazine costs US$6.95 per 
issue; at the moment, that just covers the printing costs and the postage. 
When we print more magazines, the printing costs will go down and we will 
be able to charge less for FSM. In the meantime, we ask the members of our 
community to subscribe, support us and join us in this adventure. 
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Frederick Noronha (FN)                    Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia
Freelance Journalist                      P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436
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