While looking around the net for some other stuff, I came across a new Red Hat publication, Wide Open Magazine (http://www.redhatmagazine.com/). The web page says, in part, "The Red Hat Magazine is currently available in Italy, Germany, and France. Starting in 2004, Red Hat, Inc. and bmind, LLC are offering the Wide Open Magazine, a Red Hat magazine." This was apparently announced at Linuxworld (http://investors.redhat.com/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=RHAT&script=410&layout=-6&item_id=486631). A few notes: * I am a professional writer. The first question a professional writer asks is, "How much do they pay?" The second is, "What rights do they buy?" The first one is not, as far as I know, answered on the web page. This suggests that they don't pay. * Another datum that suggests that this is not a professional operation is that they suggest article length in terms of pages (typeset pages? typescript pages? manuscript pages?) or character count (20,000). Most professional publications call for a word count. * Red Hat's partner in this venture is bmind, LLC (http://www.bmind.com/Default.asp). According to Netcraft, they run Windows 2000 and Internet Information, Sometimes (IIS) (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.bmind.com). www.redhatmagazine.com is running Linux (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.redhatmagazine.com). * This is what made me hit the roof: The proposal disclaimer (http://www.redhatmagazine.com/writers/SubmitProposal/writers-disclaimer.php) has a rather nasty shock: "The articles submitted to the website will become the property of Red Hat, Inc and bmind, LLC. By submitting any article you waive all legal rights to such article and Red Hat, Inc. and bmind, LLC are free to quote, publish, reproduce, disclose, distribute and otherwise use or display the content to others. Red Hat and bmind are free to use any ideas, concepts, know-how, or techniques contained in such articles for any purpose including but not limited to, developing, manufacturing, and marketing products using or incorporating such information submitted." In other words, you SUBMIT an article and they own it. This is NOT what I call respect for other people's intellectual property. The normal and customary rule is that they own whatever rights they are buying (sometimes just first serial, more often for computer magazines all rights) after you have signed a contract. -- Charles Curley /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign Looking for fine software \ / Respect for open standards and/or writing? X No HTML/RTF in email http://www.charlescurley.com / \ No M$ Word docs in email Key fingerprint = CE5C 6645 A45A 64E4 94C0 809C FFF6 4C48 4ECD DFDB
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