Hacker News Reader

Comment by lallysingh | Hacker News Reader

Posting a subscriber link to HN is a bit abusive, no? Quoting:

  The "subscriber link" mechanism allows an LWN.net subscriber to generate a 
  special URL for a subscription-only article. That URL can then be given to 
  others, who will be able to access the article regardless of whether they 
  are subscribed. This feature is made available as a service to LWN 
  subscribers, and in the hope that they will use it to spread the word about 
  their favorite LWN articles.

  If this feature is abused, it will hurt LWN's subscription revenues and 
  defeat the whole point. Subscriber links may go away if that comes about.

View on HN

> This feature is made available [...] in the hope that they will use it to spread the word about their favorite LWN articles

Emphasis mine. Can you make a case for it being "abusive" in the context of the full text? I take it to mean generating an excessive number of links, not posting one link to a wide audience.

I took it as sending the occasional article to people you know. Not as a way to poke a hole through the paywall and send (via HN) it to thousands and thousands of people.

corbet has previously posted subscriber-only articles to hn, which I think is a reasonable endorsement of the action.

Separately, there's pretty much no better linux news source, and imo subscription is worthwhile.

FWIW I (as the editor of LWN and the author of the article) do not mind the posting of this link. It has brought in 16,000 people (at last count), many of whom are probably unfamiliar with LWN. Some subscriptions have been sold in the process.

Certainly I don't want large amounts of our content to be distributed this way, but an occasional posting that puts an LWN article at #1 on HN is going to do us far more good than harm.

(That said, I do appreciate your concern!)

Hey, look at that! A smart, forward-looking attitude! I really need to renew my subscription. I let it lapse a while ago due to a lack of free time.

I think that this may convince me that I need to move it up higher on my list of priorities!

I've been addicted to the kernel page since I first found out about it 10+ years ago. When they put up the pay wall it looks than a month before I cave and subscribed so I wouldn't have to wait.

I read the kernel page and front page religiously, and read bits of the others.

I can't imagine how many things I've learned following the kernel's development. But the mailing lists are HUGE and thus hard to follow. LWN makes keeping up possible.

As the submitter, this is very good to hear. This is also the first link from LWN that I've submitted to HN in a few years. Thanks for running an awesome site.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com