Free Software Magazine
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| Editor in Chief | Tony Mobily |
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| Categories | Internet magazine |
| First issue | November 2004 |
| Company | The Open Company Partners Inc. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Website | www |
Free Software Magazine (also known as FSM and originally titled The Open Voice) is a website which produces a (generally bi-monthly) mostly free-content e-zine about free software.
It was started in November 2004 by Australian Tony Mobily, the former editor of TUX Magazine, under the auspices of The Open Company Partners, Inc. (based in the United States of America), and carried the subtitle The free magazine for the free software world.
FSM was originally conceived by its creator as a magazine to be sold in both print and electronic formats, with a higher signal-to-noise ratio than mass-produced print Linux magazines. Under this model, the articles were freely licensed six weeks after the print edition's publication. As O'Reilly Media's onLAMP.com noted, "several excellent magazines cover Linux, but they’re directed at particular subsets of Linux users and don’t have the broad mandate of Free Software Magazine."
However, the high costs of printing and postage resulted in the magazine moving to exclusively electronic publication via PDF.
Initially a print-ready, hand-crafted PDF version was available for download. With Issue 16 (February 2007), this was withdrawn, with the publishers citing time and money constraints. As a result, the magazine is no longer available in print copy. This move sparked a harsh response from some members of the community. As a result, from March 2008, PDF and printer friendly version of articles and PDF versions of entire issues were made available to all logged-in users. These PDF files are created automatically using TOXIC⟨⟩ and omit the styling auːnd presentation of the print-ready ones.
FSM devotes most of its context to Linux, the GNU Project and free software in general, including articles about software freedom and how it can be protected. The issues had three main sections:
Most of the articles are released under a free license (generally a Creative Commons License or GNU Free Documentation License). Some articles are released under a verbatim-copying-only license.
In keeping with the move to more on-line content, FSM moved to blog-style columns where regular authors write on more political, philosophical and ethical aspects of the free software world, and discuss free software advocacy and community in addition to tutorials and reviews of free software. There is also a community posts section which allows registered users to post similar blog-style pieces. The site also features a regular webcomic "the Bizarre Cathedral".
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