Did Slashdot bury negative stories about SourceForge?

Slashdot and the SourceForge controversy

Some folks might not know that Slashdot and SourceForge are both owned by the same parent company, Slashdot Media. That corporate connection has given rise to suspicions that Slashdot has been burying recent stories critical of SourceForge.

The Danluu blog reported on Slashdot and SourceForge:

…it’s funny to see Slashdot (which is owned by the same company as SourceForge) also attempting to destroy their own brand. They’re the only major tech news aggregator which hasn’t had a story on this, and that’s because they’ve buried every story that someone submits. This has prompted people to start submitting comments about this on other stories.

How is it possible that someone, somewhere, thinks that censoring SourceForge’s adware bundling on Slashdot is a net positive for Slashdot Media, the holding company that owns Slashdot and SourceForge? A quick search on either Google or Google News shows that the story has already made it to a number of major tech publications, making the value of suppressing the story nearly zero in the best case.

Update: The Sourceforge/GIMP story is now on Slashdot, the week after it appeared everywhere else, with a note about how the editor just got back from the weekend to people “freaking out that we’re ‘burying’ this story”. I admit that I don’t follow Slashdot very closely nowadays, but it appears that many other stories were somehow posted to Slashdot by various editors since the Sourceforge/GIMP story broke last Wednesday.

More at Danluu Blog

The news about Slashdot allegedly censoring stories about SourceForge caught the attention of some Linux redditors, and they pulled no punches sharing their thoughts about it:

TotesHuman: “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

Afkiel: “Oh, good grief[1] . I don’t even why I visit Slashdot anymore. The article discussion on Reddit is generally superior, and so is the timeliness of the posts. Stupid bad habits.”

Gaggra: “…the Slashdot site itself is certainly going downhill, with Beta, and Dice interference, and the generally slower rate of reporting. However, I still frequently find interesting stories and comments on Slashdot rather than Reddit.”

8db9c9d51e93d249483c: “I stopped visiting Slashdot a few months ago when they started having articles about sexism, racism, and other discrimination on the front page about once or twice a month. The formula was usually the same: the description/linked article made some BS claims, commenters weren’t having any of it and took the evidence/arguments (if there even were any) systematically apart. It was fun to watch for a while, but that crap just kept coming and coming with the same claims and bad arguments, it just got tiring and frustrating more than anything else. It really reminds me of that saying about playing chess with a pigeon.”

Sotonohito: “I remember when slashdot was my go to place for arguing about tech. Then it just faded away and I honestly can’t remember the last time I went there. It’s been years. Wow.”

Plazman30: “Slashdot just responded this morning about this. They’re not burying stories and just put one on the front page about this.”

Bnolsen: “…slashdot’s weakness is the bias of the editors. They have their own agenda and post things supporting that agenda, not matter how ridiculous the topic or their stance. Hacker news is better for links posted but it has something missing as well.”

Nixon_richard_m: “Where have you gone CmdrTaco? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Sincerely, Richard Nixon”

Sej7278: “Slashdot jumped the shark about a decade ago, it got too filled with clueless hipsters and microsoft paid shills.”

More at Reddit

Will the next Nintendo console run Android?

Nintendo is hard at work on its next generation videogame console, and some recent rumors indicate that it might actually run Android as its operating system.

Steven Hannley reports for Hardcore Gamer:

Nikkei (a reputable Japanese business newspaper) has reported (note that you must be a Nikkei subscriber to view the full article) today via an inside source that the console will run on an Android OS. It’s unclear whether or not this means that the console will be handheld in some nature (like a powerful Android tablet), or perhaps some sort of a concept similar to the many microconsoles we’ve seen pop up on the market in recent months the like the Ouya.

The source stated that moving towards Android was the result of third-party publishers quickly abandoning the Wii U, encouraging the company to embrace an open platform to easier allow developers to create content for it.

More at Hardcore Gamer

The Ubuntu Community Council looks for $143,000 in donations

The Ubuntu Community Council is on the hunt for what might be $143,000 in donations that haven’t been accounted for just yet.

Silviu Stahie reports for Softpedia:

The Ubuntu Community Council has made a rather troublesome discovery regarding the accounting of $143,000 in donations. From the looks of it, no one knows how this money was spent.

The Ubuntu Community Council asked Canonical for a detailed report about the donations for the period of October 2012 to April of 2013, and they received the following reply: Community $47,769.58, Flavours $47,042.42, and Upstream $48,303.55. It might seem like a detailed report, but Ubuntu Community Council says that it doesn’t know exactly how this money has been spent and what happened to it.

Ubuntu is the most used Linux operating system, so it stands to reason that it gathers quite a few donations. That can be clearly seen from the sums of money listed just for the October 2012 – April 2013 interval. Normally, those funds are used for clear purposes, but Canonical didn’t have the tools in place to track them, which lead to the current issues.

More at Softpedia

Did you miss a roundup? Check the Eye On Open home page to get caught up with the latest news about open source and Linux.