An Historic Moment

Well OK... Perhaps not. :)

This is a testament to gravity. When you first start writing on the web, you are painfully aware that you are but an isolated voice talking to itself. You write. You press publish. And...

Off into the nothingness.

Over time, though, with the tremendous aid of searchbots, minds arrive.

A Loose Thought

A while ago I toyed with the idea that it would be lovely if we had a central area for like minds to gather regarding Libre software art and design. A place free of ZOMGAWESOME cheerleading and HATEHATEHATE of the endless stream of hate sites. A place where the collective feels inertia and strength as opposed to a closed and cliquey corner of sycophantic praise or vitriolic bullying.

In short, a place where people that are passionate about Libre software art, design, presence, and aesthetics can debate, discuss, and engage each other.

Not being a web designer type, I let the thought pass.

Then and Now

As those minds from earlier gathered, some cross pollination occurred. One mind gets introduced into another and gradually a shared set of interests form. A gravity developed. Traction.

Librescope is the product of that gravity.

What is it?

Librescope is the brainchild of Jay over at Kilobitspersecond. He is a passionate and articulate individual with a sharp interest in Libre software design. When he approached me with the idea that there should be a gathering place with coffee shop / art house sensibilities for Libre art and design issues, I was immediately interested. Jay pushed a massive rock up a hill and Librescope was born.

With a firm belief to make publishing content painless, it was agreed upon that it would aggregate our various blogs into one feed with the hope that a community would grow. Out of that, it is hoped that we might find other like minded authors to add to the feed.

A place for Debian, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, KDE, GNOME, XFCE, and every other type of Libre software individual can engage topics that matter regarding art and design. The focus spans all distributions, software, and manifestations. If it is Libre and related to art and design, we want to discuss it. More importantly, we want to discuss it with you.

What it isn't?

Librescope is not a site about cheerleading on distro X. It is not a site where various hate ranters will be given yet-another-forum about issue Y. Comments will be subjectively moderated by our Editor-In-Chief.

In short, it is created for people like you.

Passion

We are hoping that we can grow a passionate community that embraces debate, discussion, and educated discourse. We will do everything we can to ensure that the discussions are pertinent, relevant, and respectful to the members of the new community.

Our current goal is small, and as such, we don't have a formal method of adopting new writers and such. Currently there are two forms of editors: article writers and feed editors. The article writers get their blog posts tagged with librescope syndicated and aggregated to the main site. Feed editors help to tag relevant blog posts and articles already on the web. These too are aggregated on the site. If you have a sustained interest in art and design in Libre software and are interested in contributing, contact Jay over at Kilobitspersecond.

So without further ado, if you or someone you know is interested, please blog, tweet, dent, and link to it. Join us in trying to grow a little Libre coffee shop / art house / design corner of the internet over at...

Librescope.