I have written in the last newsletter about the rough patch we (and other independent publishers) are going through right now, so I will spare you the details here.
Today, I just want to say thank you.
Fourteen years is a long time to keep anything alive on the internet, and the honest reason It’s FOSS is still here is the people who show up for it, support it, share the articles, leave a comment, send me messages or simply read it regularly.
This community forum turns 8 this year too.
This little corner of the web has stayed genuinely warm because of all the regular members (I won’t name because I don’t want to miss out on anyone).
Linux users helping each other, no noise, no toxicity. That is rarer in forums, and I appreciate everyone for that.
It has given me great pleasure to be part of this forum, congratulations and many thanks to you and the team behind the covers who make it work so well
Thank you for creating and maintaining It’s Foss and the forum! It is a great source of knowledge on Linux and a fantastic community ready to help users regardless of the their level of knowledge without a condescending attitude!
thank you very much, dear Abhishek, for providing It´s FOSS to us and for giving us such a great opportunity to contribute (and seek help) in the forum.
It´s highly appreciated.
To be honest, I´ve never come across any other forum hosting so many friendly and knowledgeable people who are willing to help newcomers and “professionals” alike.
Our forum is certainly one of a kind.
I so hope for a bright future for all of us.
And a very happy birthday to your son, dear Abhishek.
Hopefully you and your family can find the time to celebrate the occasion today.
Hi Abhishek congrats really you have made something very special here both the site its foss and above all this forum its a very special place i never been to a more friendly and welcoming forum ever ,where we can talk all things Linux and other stuff to and i really like that. And a big congrat to your son . Best regards Mikael
Congratulations on the anniversary of It’s Foss. 14 years is a long time in the computer business. Wishing you much success in the coming years as your business adapts and grows. I enjoyed being a member of this forum and want to ‘Thank You’ for providing this meeting place.
We should all read Abhishek’s newsletter and the link it contains about the future of Google search.
One extract
“While Google says that AI Mode is not the default experience, Search’s user interface encourages users to ask follow-up questions instead of scrolling down to the links to other pages. (The links, to clarify, have not entirely disappeared; they are just no longer the priority for many types of searches.)”
So I read that as meaning a Google search will still return a list of links, but they will be hidden after an AI summary that can take the whole first page … so fewer people will look thru the links.
There are other search engines, but they mostly are doing the same.
The only path I can see to this business of hiding links would be to make some sort of wrapper for all returned search results that either removes the AI summary or adds hyperlinks to it.
Does anyone know if there is an AI service that uses hypertext to format its response?
I think some form of referencing is needed in AI responses … one has to be able to check information by going back to its original source. That is basic literature review technique, and it is being broken by modern AI not giving references
None of this is going to help immediately with @abhishek 's problem of losing links. He needs donations or another way to support his site. We may have to tolerate ads.
Co-pilot is now adding a reference link to some of the information they provide. I asked Co-pilot about it and here was part of the reply.
“Those little reference links aren’t ads — they’re citations Copilot adds when it detects that part of its answer matches publicly available code or information. It’s a transparency feature, not marketing.”
I would rather see a few Ads vs seeing the forum be discontinued.
