Red Hat Magazine: Wide Open Magazine

[Charles Curley]

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
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http://www.charlescurley.com    / \    No M$ Word docs in email

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