It looks like Helios over at lobby4linux has received one to many flames recently and is firing a salvo back. I was also just reading (and responding in comments to) a similar article at LXer. It’s my belief Linux media sites have an important role in the greater computing community.

Professional journalistic outlets and writers with a solid knowledge of and foundation in Unix and OSS are currently outstripped by the demand for their writing. While it’s important to have “general” news venues that cover a variety of media in addition to Unix/Linux/OSS specific topics, open source media has a definate place.

Open source doesn’t tend to sell itself much, if at all. There’s nothing to point you to what hardware will work, which software to use, what might be a good (non-commercial) choice for your company.

This is where open source software journalists (such as yours truly otherwhere) have an important role to play. We can highlight software and hardware that might otherwise be over-looked.

While the news might be a little more geared toward Unix/Linux/OSS than at a more general site, chances are that’s what you (as a reader) are looking for. If you’re going to Lobby4 Linux, I’d think that you’re looking for information about linux.

To flame Helios for reporting on the topic of the website heavily seems a bit silly. I think he’s got the right of the matter.