How 'bout OS Dev Magazine!

[codemastersnake]

Hello fellow OS Devers!

What's the Idea?
Well, I'll come straight to the point. I have an idea and want to discuss it with you all!

I think that we all should start an online OS development magazine. It'll be a community driven magazine where people like us can publish there article and tutorials. recommend best practices to other OS developer.

Is it worth?
I know most of you will say that we already have forums and wiki. But, I think magazine will become a great way of communicating with others and sharing your articles. Forums are great way to share knowledge, but an online magazine will give one an opportunity to publish articles with there names. It'll be more decent way of telling others what do you think.

How will the plan be executed?
There will be an editorial team that will review the article before publishing it. And if it's worth submitting then we will publish it.

We will have three basic categories viz. Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. After that we will have tags for every published article.

I am thinking of using wordpress as a publishing tool.
I'll pay for the hosting and manage it myself. I have experience in online content management.

I have never seen such magazines!
See Smashing Magazine and look at their success. There are many online magazines on many topics over the net.

What do I want?
Particularly nothing! I just want to serve the community. I have been in OS development for a long time. I have learned a lot and want to take our community to next level. Everybody is moving so why can't we?

I would like you people to please take this seriously and please reply with your feelings, suggestions, criticism or anything you would like to share. I'll keep on updating this topic.

[JackScott]

It was tried, it failed. Although everybody seems to want to read it, nobody wants to write for it. Search the forums for "System Call Magazine".

Although I'll admit I could have done better as an editor, I think the main problem is that there genuinely isn't enough content flying around in the OSDev world, at least the hobbyist OSDev world. Maybe a Wordpress blog could work better, but I still feel it would have that problem. For non-hobbyist material, such magazines (and journals) exist already. ACM publishes so many things it's not funny.

If you think you can make it work, go for it. But, I should have listened to Solar the first time.

My current feeling is that OSDev isn't such a fluid thing that it requires a magazine, it requires a reference. That reference is the OSDev wiki. Although new things do happen in OSDev that warrant a magazine, there isn't enough content in this community to warrant a magazine, and not enough people to research and write content for things that happen outside this community.

[piranha]

...and in my opinion research is the key thing. (sorry to just add on).

If there were a bunch of people looking for new ways to do stuff all the time (new ways that warranted articles and such) then it would probably work. But that doesn't happen enough.

-JL

[codemastersnake]

@piranah

Ok, I read your mag. It was good. I think you are perfectly right! everybody does wanna read it, but nobody wants to write anything.
BTW can you share what Solar said to you?

---------------------------

So I think that we have a challenge here. The main problem is how to keep the content flowing? what do you people think about it's solution.

# Should we try to contact people who have published books on os development to write something for us?
# or should we take off the restrictions and let everybody write something useful. and make the editorial staff to be more lenient.
# Or should we try to convince people who are into OS development for a long long time. They could contribute a lot.
# I also think that we should not publish our magazine regularly on monthly basis rather we should just make it a weblog where people can publish articles.
# And we should also keep the topics to more general things rather. So that more people can send there writings.
# we could also publish articles like list of websites that gets regularly updated and things like that.

More over I think that it should have a 'community effort' to be successful.

What say?

[JackScott]

http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?p=118159#p118159 is Solar's post.

[codemastersnake]

Thanks for the link

But I would really like to know the views of other people also....

[Combuster]

For new inspirations, you need people trying. For people to really try out stuff, the need to be pretty much pro.

And as we all know, there are few pros around here, and if those people are to write a magazine, they need to do a lot of work each to get it filled up. And I know for a good deal of them that they rather work on getting things done on their own side.

I personally made a decision during last round that I'd see if the mag could establish well enough to hit the third round, then I'd contribute something to it. Basically to make sure I wasn't a form of life support.

[DeletedAccount]

Hi,
@JackScott:
I would have contributed , I did tell you to send mails . I have other commitments as well . But I try to keep up with all my commitments on schedule . I really would have contributed and would still love to contribute.

Regards
Sandeep

[Troy Martin]

I think I might have gotten myself into a free online computer magazine by mistake during computer class (I designed the cover, the teacher said she couldn't wait to see the articles.)

The cheezy magazine name is ".org Magazine".

[Dex]

These magazine fail beceuse, they are written like text books, when i beleave a more light hearted approach would work better.
Something like the gp2x mags http://archive.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,2

[earlz]

I think a blog would work better really. Cause there are tihngs I could see articles written over "how to get ACPI working in your OS" "Why /dev should be phyically on the medium, and why not" etc etc..

But I really don't see there being enough stuff to write a monthly magazine.

Sure, there is the Wiki, but you don't have the "freeness" of writing your own article. You can't address your own points of view as well because the Wiki is more for facts and theory, not for opinions(which I like it that way)..

I would like to contribute in some way to such a thing, but I think a scheduled magazine would fail due to lack of initial interest and amount of content per release.

[Solar]

If you think you can make it work, go for it. But, I should have listened to Solar the first time.

*evil chuckle*

No, seriously, this is one of those things where I hate being right in the end. I've seen so many ambitious, enthusiastic projects crash and burn, sometimes I feel like an old, cynical bastard.

Well, two out of three... but I digress.

The thing is, there are many, many ideas floating around, which, on first glance, sound like greatness, fun, and undying fame. But most of them are bound to eat away your time, effort, and enthusiasm, while very few are actually as rewarding as you first pictured them. Too much of such failures, and you become like me. Which is, old and cynical. (Can't help you with the third one, it's a birthright so to speak. )

Since you sooner or later get old anyway, save your enthusiasm for the really great things in your life, so you'll end up old and content instead. Raising a bunch of happy, intelligent and caring kids, for example, can do this for you. Or building a tree hut that looks like a BattleMech.

Bottom line, any "OS Dev Magazine" will end up with about 5% of the OSDev regulars being writers for the mag, and about 60% of the regulars plus the odd outsider or two being readers of the mag. Which begs the question, why bother?