discuss: Re: Greg Ferguson -- LinuxGazette Membership.... (fwd)
Subject:
FAO: Greg Ferguson -- LinuxGazette Membership.... (fwd)
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
14 Nov 2003 02:13:18 -0000
Message-Id: <20031114021354.GA16490@linuxmafia.com>
I should mention something else affecting the LDP: Your back-issue
archive of Linux Gazette has been retroactively censored by SSC. At a
minimum, I would suggest replacing LDP's copies of issue #95 (Oct. 2003)[1]
and #92 (July 2003)[2] with pristine copies.
Do I correctly guess that SSC, Inc. didn't inform LDP? They didn't tell
us (LG editors), either. I'll explain.
Around Oct. 2-4, 2003, Joerg Jaspert ####@####.#### who packages
Linux Gazette for Debian, mentioned to LG editor Heather Stern
####@####.#### that material she'd told him to expect in the
October issue's Mailbag column wasn't there. He asked whether it had
been deferred. This came as a surprise to Heather, who _had_ included
it in the published issue.
We quickly checked, and found that not only had the then-current issue
been tampered with at www.linuxgazette.com and mirrors, but so had at
least one back issue: An entire article had been retroactively removed
from the July 2003 issue -- without notice to the staff or author.
We immediately inquired with both SSC, Inc. owner Phil Hughes and with
his webmaster. Receiving no reply, we asked again several days later.
No reply. (We would have telephoned them, but they're now in Costa Rica.)
It was now apparent that the integrity of issues at www.linuxgazette.com
couldn't be trusted. Initially, we had difficulty repairing the damage,
because SSC's behind-our-backs changes (including adding "TM" symbols to
the phrase "Linux Gazette", by the way) had already propagated to most
LG mirrors. Fortunately, the Debian packages were still pristine, and
we were able to reconstruct an undamaged back-issue archive from that.
We've been a bit too busy to check the other back issues, but you might
want to refresh yours from http://linuxgazette.net/ . (The one you need
to treat manually is issue #96, Nov. 2003, which differs between SSC's
version, produced by SSC employees, and the community-produced one at
linuxgazette.net . We're sorry about that confusion: It wasn't our
idea.)
LG's editors never change back issues -- with very rare exceptions to
fix broken links, maybe spelling errors, etc. For one thing, it would
be unkind to mirror sites.
[1] http://www.tldp.org/LDP/LG/issue95/index.html Compare against
unmodified version: http://linuxgazette.net/issue95/index.html, whose
Mailbag article wasn't truncated by SSC.
[2] http://www.tldp.org/LDP/LG/issue92/index.html Compare against
unmodified version: http://linuxgazette.net/issue92/index.html, which
correctly contains Janine M. Lodato's article.
--
Cheers, * Contributing Editor, Linux Gazette *
Rick Moen -*- See the Linux Gazette in its new home: -*-
####@####.#### <http://linuxgazette.net/>
