A note on subscription prices from LWN

AlexB138

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.

microtonal

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.

roryirvine

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.

thataccount

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.

Diederich

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.

farlight

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.

0xbadc0de5

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.

birdieop

They could also consider paying their employees less. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38106227

claykkari

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.

DeepLogin

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.

rvz

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.

xpct

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..

Aissen

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!

excitedrustle

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).

saberience

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.

Iuz

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.

kfogel

I will be paying the new rate, and with pleasure. LWN is great.

mmooss

> prices have changed considerably I'm not doubting it, but I wonder what costs have changed for them?

tensegrist

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

bee_rider

> 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.