LWN is one of the, if not the single, highest signal tech publications around. I hope they're able to maintain a stable subscription service. Being user funded, and avoiding having to maintain allegiance to advertisers, is likely part of why their quality is so high.
Not only that but lwn is one of the main sites that gets submitted to HN all year round (not daily, but maybe nearish to daily). So the audience here on HN has been exposed to it over the years. I'm not sure what more they could do to get new subscribers, I certainly hope they figure that out or how to get new ways to earn revenue without having to go the ad route.
That's the thing though. You can get all the value from LWN through here. Even if it wasn't for them tolerating subscriber links being posted on HN, the week-long delay isn't nearly enough an incentive to actually subscribe, rationally speaking.
Rationally-speaking, maybe not. I’ve been a long-time subscriber. When I first subscribed, my day-to-day involved embedded Linux and getting the “breaking news” was pretty valuable. These days I still do that somewhat but I’m stuck on a crusty vendor kernel and anything I read about a kernel newer than 5.15 is going to land on my desk in approximately 2028… but I still subscribe, mostly with a patronage mindset: I don’t acutely get value from the subscription every week, but I think it’s a community service and I’m happy to pitch in a few bucks to keep it alive.
not saying parent feels this way but the target class of this website often does not separate the two. we're still sloughing off the goofballery of objectivism, i guess.
Agree. I don't read it every week, but I greatly appreciate the quality (both of the technical content and the lack of advertising/sensationalism/clickbait) when I do read an article. Happy to pay to support this style of tech reporting and journalism.
Crab-bucket mentality aside, what they do is extremely important and hard to do.
I can't write an occasional blog post without wrestling with my ideas and words, and they constantly churn out this high quality material, without ever slowing down. They deserve what they earn.
OTOH, thanks for nudging me towards subscribing to LWN a bit more.
That's such a weird take away, you're comparing Mozilla which has a diverse set of employees, versus an organization whose sole purpose is to hire high quality technical writers, which is already pretty niche.
LWN is one of the cornerstones of my very successful career.
Starting from the beginning, I have (at least) read through every story and every article, every week, since 1998. Especially in the beginning, there was a lot in each article I didn't understand. I would try to do some digging into those topics.
One way or another, just the weekly exposure to absolutely top notch technical writing was foundational to me.
When newer folk would ask me how to really get good with Linux, I would always point them to LWN.net.
I've been a subscriber since the beginning. That small investment is the least I can do given the incalculable value LWN has brought to me.
Sorry to be that guy, but... Please consider donating a significant amount to them, given that they have been a cornerstone of your very successful career.
I did something similar in the past, in relation to Ubuntu, and I never regretted it, even if that money would have been very useful if spent in other ways.
I know the editors visit these discussions: please, next time use a more descriptive title! I nearly had a fit when I saw that, really thought LWN is going down like it almost did 20 years ago.
Happy to pay the new price, even though I can only afford the cheapest tier.
> The LWN site has been improved in a number of ways, with features like articles in EPUB format,
This is the single biggest feature that makes me keep my subscription going. The convenience to read longer form offline on my ebook reader makes me wish all other long form content websites would have the same.
Seems like only yesterday when they last increased their prices but it was, in fact, back in January 2022 - time flies!
I'll have been an LWN subscriber for 22 years as of next week, and am very happy to continue to be one. It's easily the most worthwhile subscription I currently have.
Speaking of high quality publications, I wish we could get AnandTech back :( On some older blogs, I still stumble on dead links, and very few of them are on internet archive..
Also, if you have any sort of buying power: make sure you company pays for a group subscription, and maintains it over the years. I try do that here. Nudge your colleagues to use the subscription and send them the occasional article!
This reminded me that I'd let my LWN subscription lapse after a credit card expired. Just renewed for a year and turned on automatic renewals (at least until the next credit card expiration).
Tried making an account but seems to take quite a while (forever?) getting the corresponding email. I guess their server is taking a beating due to this article.
> There are few things we like less than raising prices, which is why we have done it so rarely. It would be far better to keep LWN as inexpensive as possible and make it up in volume. Subscriber growth has stalled, though, in recent years, making that strategy unworkable for now. We are working on schemes to bring in more subscribers again, but that is a long-term process; getting there requires some short-term help.
I can see why they’d want to keep bumping prices occasionally (to keep up with inflation). Why do they need plans to increase subscriber growth, though, are they not currently profitable? It seems like they must have hit a steady-state by now.
If we can grow the number of subscribers, we don't need to raise prices for the ones that have supported us all this time; I would find that preferable. Besides, who doesn't want a broader reach?
Inflation means that hosting costs increase. On the site they also mention being under heavy scraper load which also isn’t free.
Then the writers probably also need compensation increase, at the very least to be a responsible employer so that the employees can deal with inflation.
Inflation happens regularly, normally, or when world leaders emit another chaos bomb, and they do not raise prices immediately causing a lower income/costs ratio. In order to keep up with that without raising the prices in between you need more income and that comes from more payers.
This is literally the first I've ever heard of LWN (in over 20 years of being a professional engineer) so clearly they could be doing better marketing.
Good. Increase the subscription prices against what the users think. There are no ads at all. But of course not everyone will agree and want it for free.
Many know they want it for free. If you don't pay at all then it will force LWN to begin to place ads on their newsletter to cover the costs.
There is no realistic in-between other than actually paying for your services.
LWN, probably about to discover people are paying high prices for all manner of things and will find that LWN is, sadly, a disposable entity to pay for.
You could also see if it's something your employer allows you to expense. It's still cheap enough that it's something most managers can just approve directly, depending on organizational structures.
I suspect everybody likely to do so has already done so. Anybody who thinks $6 a month is a lot of money will also think $5 a month is a lot of money for something that they can get for free by waiting a week.
5 to 6 dollars is not much in terms of a donation. In terms of a subscription, though...One thing is voluntary if you find value, the other is mandatory to get to the value unless you are willing to wait.
I think you're reinforcing my point. Both $5 and $6 a month are a lot of money to many people. LWN isn't "about to discover" this, they've likely already discovered this in their release + 1 week traffic over the years since they set the price at $5/month.
I did not use LWN ago, and am worried the future of it.
It outputs content and the users read the articles. I think the value of the model is not big.
The most important knowledge and experience is from your own practice, thinking, experiment, and reality.
If the price is too high, many users maybe think it is not worthy of the price, especially because there are many free and useful knowledge on Internet.
LWN is one of the, if not the single, highest signal tech publications around. I hope they're able to maintain a stable subscription service. Being user funded, and avoiding having to maintain allegiance to advertisers, is likely part of why their quality is so high.
Not only that but lwn is one of the main sites that gets submitted to HN all year round (not daily, but maybe nearish to daily). So the audience here on HN has been exposed to it over the years. I'm not sure what more they could do to get new subscribers, I certainly hope they figure that out or how to get new ways to earn revenue without having to go the ad route.
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lwn.net
I’m occasional lwn reader and I had no idea there are subscriptions there!
That's the thing though. You can get all the value from LWN through here. Even if it wasn't for them tolerating subscriber links being posted on HN, the week-long delay isn't nearly enough an incentive to actually subscribe, rationally speaking.
Rationally-speaking, maybe not. I’ve been a long-time subscriber. When I first subscribed, my day-to-day involved embedded Linux and getting the “breaking news” was pretty valuable. These days I still do that somewhat but I’m stuck on a crusty vendor kernel and anything I read about a kernel newer than 5.15 is going to land on my desk in approximately 2028… but I still subscribe, mostly with a patronage mindset: I don’t acutely get value from the subscription every week, but I think it’s a community service and I’m happy to pitch in a few bucks to keep it alive.
Wouldn’t rationally speaking you’d want to support them to keep them around? Or did you mean selfishly speaking?
not saying parent feels this way but the target class of this website often does not separate the two. we're still sloughing off the goofballery of objectivism, i guess.
I think the generosity and straightforwardness are a big part of the attraction for many subscribers.
They've always respected their readers and I hope that continues to pay off.
Agree. I don't read it every week, but I greatly appreciate the quality (both of the technical content and the lack of advertising/sensationalism/clickbait) when I do read an article. Happy to pay to support this style of tech reporting and journalism.
This is why nobody likes economists.
Easy to say until they have to eventually make the hard decision to shut down.
Selfishly speaking is the word you were looking for.
Well for me, at least, it's those features that make me a subscriber. If not for those I wouldn't do it
Rationally speaking, if you're getting value from it, you should be interested in its continued existence and therefore subscribe.
They could also consider paying their employees less.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38106227
Ah yes, reward the people generating the value less, that should be a neutral move vis a vis the value of the product.
I'd argue otherwise.
Crab-bucket mentality aside, what they do is extremely important and hard to do.
I can't write an occasional blog post without wrestling with my ideas and words, and they constantly churn out this high quality material, without ever slowing down. They deserve what they earn.
OTOH, thanks for nudging me towards subscribing to LWN a bit more.
Edit: Just subscribed. Thank you.
That person posted this two years later https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44870881 so I don't think they're going to agree with your interpretation of the comment.
If I can't have something, you shouldn't either, why didn't I think of that! Chud
That's such a weird take away, you're comparing Mozilla which has a diverse set of employees, versus an organization whose sole purpose is to hire high quality technical writers, which is already pretty niche.
LWN is one of the cornerstones of my very successful career.
Starting from the beginning, I have (at least) read through every story and every article, every week, since 1998. Especially in the beginning, there was a lot in each article I didn't understand. I would try to do some digging into those topics.
One way or another, just the weekly exposure to absolutely top notch technical writing was foundational to me.
When newer folk would ask me how to really get good with Linux, I would always point them to LWN.net.
I've been a subscriber since the beginning. That small investment is the least I can do given the incalculable value LWN has brought to me.
Sorry to be that guy, but... Please consider donating a significant amount to them, given that they have been a cornerstone of your very successful career.
I did something similar in the past, in relation to Ubuntu, and I never regretted it, even if that money would have been very useful if spent in other ways.
I will be doing just that today.
I know the editors visit these discussions: please, next time use a more descriptive title! I nearly had a fit when I saw that, really thought LWN is going down like it almost did 20 years ago.
Happy to pay the new price, even though I can only afford the cheapest tier.
> The LWN site has been improved in a number of ways, with features like articles in EPUB format,
This is the single biggest feature that makes me keep my subscription going. The convenience to read longer form offline on my ebook reader makes me wish all other long form content websites would have the same.
Are there more things like LWN for other fields/subjects? A math LWN of sorts, for example? I would happily pay for it too if it follows this model.
Seems like only yesterday when they last increased their prices but it was, in fact, back in January 2022 - time flies!
I'll have been an LWN subscriber for 22 years as of next week, and am very happy to continue to be one. It's easily the most worthwhile subscription I currently have.
Thanks LWN team for the honest and straightforward post! The prices you ask are well worth it for the incredible value that LWN provides.
I forgot to renew my subscription a while back and it has been a bit busy, will renew now.
Speaking of high quality publications, I wish we could get AnandTech back :( On some older blogs, I still stumble on dead links, and very few of them are on internet archive..
I will be paying the new rate, and with pleasure. LWN is great.
i'd been meaning to subscribe for…the better part of my life. just did, and if you're reading this and have the means you should too
better late than never, and especially good now that every single day most of us are reading so many words that don't mean anything
Also, if you have any sort of buying power: make sure you company pays for a group subscription, and maintains it over the years. I try do that here. Nudge your colleagues to use the subscription and send them the occasional article!
Subscribed. For the next year, goal is to spend more time on lwn and less time on hn lol
This reminded me that I'd let my LWN subscription lapse after a credit card expired. Just renewed for a year and turned on automatic renewals (at least until the next credit card expiration).
Tried making an account but seems to take quite a while (forever?) getting the corresponding email. I guess their server is taking a beating due to this article.
Update: received it after ~40 minutes.
> There are few things we like less than raising prices, which is why we have done it so rarely. It would be far better to keep LWN as inexpensive as possible and make it up in volume. Subscriber growth has stalled, though, in recent years, making that strategy unworkable for now. We are working on schemes to bring in more subscribers again, but that is a long-term process; getting there requires some short-term help.
I can see why they’d want to keep bumping prices occasionally (to keep up with inflation). Why do they need plans to increase subscriber growth, though, are they not currently profitable? It seems like they must have hit a steady-state by now.
If we can grow the number of subscribers, we don't need to raise prices for the ones that have supported us all this time; I would find that preferable. Besides, who doesn't want a broader reach?
Inflation means that hosting costs increase. On the site they also mention being under heavy scraper load which also isn’t free.
Then the writers probably also need compensation increase, at the very least to be a responsible employer so that the employees can deal with inflation.
Inflation happens regularly, normally, or when world leaders emit another chaos bomb, and they do not raise prices immediately causing a lower income/costs ratio. In order to keep up with that without raising the prices in between you need more income and that comes from more payers.
Sorry guys, for my inequity, but whats LWN
It is one click from that article to the homepage, which offers a blurb on the site.
https://lwn.net/
What subscription level will finally make them increase their article CSS's line-height from "affront to eyes" to "actually legible"?
Firefox plugin? Script Monkey? Ctrl+ to zoom the page? Reader mode?
> prices have changed considerably
I'm not doubting it, but I wonder what costs have changed for them?
Food and shelter if nothing else. Gotta pay the upkeep on the meat robots!
This is literally the first I've ever heard of LWN (in over 20 years of being a professional engineer) so clearly they could be doing better marketing.
If you are not working with Linux kernel you don't need it. Those who are, are likely already subscribed
It is fairly Linux-focused fwiw
Good. Increase the subscription prices against what the users think. There are no ads at all. But of course not everyone will agree and want it for free.
Many know they want it for free. If you don't pay at all then it will force LWN to begin to place ads on their newsletter to cover the costs.
There is no realistic in-between other than actually paying for your services.
tl;dr - LWN is raising their prices 20%.
I have no opinion since I'm not a subscriber, just adding for clarity since the title is ambiguous.
I guess most people are about to unsubscribe from LWN.
I don't think there news articles are even worthy enough to be paywalled at all this days.
Maybe you should allow free speech again if subscriber growth has stalled. It is a self-congratulatory echo chamber.
Do you realise that almost no one can understand what you're alluding to? So the comment looks not only vindicative but also stupid.
Just a reminder that may be relevant to your gripe: allowing free speech is perfectly compatible with forbidding abuse and hate speech.
Calls of "you should allow free speech" invariable actually mean "I should be allowed to harass your members".
I enjoy spaces that are at least semi-moderated.
You are just harassing someone by putting words into their mouth. See how it works?
LWN, probably about to discover people are paying high prices for all manner of things and will find that LWN is, sadly, a disposable entity to pay for.
You could also see if it's something your employer allows you to expense. It's still cheap enough that it's something most managers can just approve directly, depending on organizational structures.
I suspect everybody likely to do so has already done so. Anybody who thinks $6 a month is a lot of money will also think $5 a month is a lot of money for something that they can get for free by waiting a week.
5 to 6 dollars is not much in terms of a donation. In terms of a subscription, though...One thing is voluntary if you find value, the other is mandatory to get to the value unless you are willing to wait.
I think you're reinforcing my point. Both $5 and $6 a month are a lot of money to many people. LWN isn't "about to discover" this, they've likely already discovered this in their release + 1 week traffic over the years since they set the price at $5/month.
It's been my experience most people, regardless of what point you make, feel like you are reinforcing their points these days.
Based on the initial response, it does not, in fact, seem like this is the conclusion.
They could always bump down a tier if needed, they have 6 months to decide anyway.
I did not use LWN ago, and am worried the future of it.
It outputs content and the users read the articles. I think the value of the model is not big.
The most important knowledge and experience is from your own practice, thinking, experiment, and reality.
If the price is too high, many users maybe think it is not worthy of the price, especially because there are many free and useful knowledge on Internet.