Another difficult decision, the Linux Chinese community announced that it would cease operations. The open source community Linux China announced that the "Linux China" community, including the main network, public accounts, video accounts, and its affiliated "Hardcore Observation" column, will stop updating and operating indefinitely.

The founder of the community said that it was a difficult decision to stop operations, but he had to make this decision due to multiple reasons, including completing the mission of the community, the reduction of the need for translation work, personal financial pressure, etc.

According to the founder, articles published by the community will be packaged into e-books for everyone to keep. He plans to take a break and go on a personal trip after stopping operations.

The following is an announcement to cease operations:

"Linux China" has completed its historical mission

Initially, our desire was to build "Linux China" into a public welfare community that spreads open source technology. But after more than ten years of development, open source culture and Linux-related open source technologies have been widely spread (during this period, we may have made some small contributions). Therefore, the role that continued operations can play is not that great.

Due to accidental reasons, "Linux China" did not actually develop according to our original vision. Over the years, the only project that has really persisted is a translation team LCTT, which has translated thousands of articles and guided hundreds of people to participate in open source contributions. However, in recent years, with the advancement of computer translation technology, especially the emergence of ChatGPT, the necessity of translation work has been greatly reduced. Since last year, I have been using ChatGPT to translate some articles, and although it still needs one or two proofreads, there are basically no major problems. Therefore, the existence of LCTT becomes less important.

In fact, LCTT has fallen into a semi-dead state, with hundreds of contributors basically dormant. Due to technical reasons, it is even difficult to maintain automated topic selection work. The only person who can continue to translate, besides me, is our chief translator geekpi. From this perspective, this is no longer a community-based translation organization.

Initial choice of direction and inevitable consequences of idealism

In 2003, before founding "Linux China", I also founded another open source technology community called "CNGNU". But later because my business failed, the community was closed. Subsequently, my brother Wang Xingjiang established a new website using my idle domain name linux.cn, and we gave it the arrogant name "Linux China" - in fact, it needs to be clarified that we have no connection with the official Linux organization, nor do we represent the official Linux.

The original intention of establishing this website (community) was to spread knowledge and culture without considering the future profit model. This also led to our later rejection of turning the community into a commercial website to conduct commercial activities such as training and conferences.

But this brings huge financial pressure, especially during a period when hosting server prices are high. Fortunately, we received sponsorship from Qiniu Cloud in terms of CDN and Alibaba Cloud in terms of PR, which allowed us to develop. Of course, there are also sponsorships from other advertisers and friends, and I will thank them all later.

In 2015, I left China Telecom and became a free agent. No one would pay me a salary anymore. In recent years, "Linux China" has had some income, mainly from writing and publishing some articles for advertisers, but the income is not stable. And during those three famous years, the revenue picture was even bleaker. To be honest, in the past few years, I have been in a state of chronic personal and financial bleeding.

So now, when the overall economy isn't doing well, there's even more pressure.

The intersection of personal exhaustion and life

In recent years, "Linux China" has become more and more like a "personal" website, and almost all processes need to be completed by me personally. Since the first day it was opened, the official account of "Linux China" has not stopped updating on any day - whether it is New Year's Eve or my health, whether I am on a business trip or traveling with my family. In the past two years, I started the "Hardcore Observation" column again, which requires me to spend hours every day collecting, editing, recording and publishing videos. Now there are 1,263 issues and it never stops.

Tired? Tired, but what’s even more tiring is endless tiredness.

I am exactly fifty years old this year. For me, this age is a landmark point where I need to reorient my life. When I was thirty years old, I had a feeling of "suddenly realizing that yesterday was no longer the same thing", which changed the trajectory of my life. When I was forty years old, I experienced the shock of my father's death, and a few years later, my brother and other relatives passed away one after another. This year, I am once again standing at the crossroads of my life, and I think I should change.

Fortunately, my health, which I have been very worried about, has not had major problems so far. Some time ago, I went for a physical examination that I had not dared to do for several years. Basically, there were no major problems.

No other choice?

Frankly, I thought about it over and over again.

However, I have not found a suitable person or institution to entrust "Linux China". A community that is unprofitable and continues to lose money will find it difficult to find trustees who can maintain its independence and principles.

I am also unwilling to sell all the assets of "Linux China" to commercial organizations. Someone was willing to pay a high price to buy our domain name, but the price they paid was far from what I had to sell my conscience and reputation for.

In general, it is because of these reasons, big and small, that I made the difficult decision to end these years of persistence. Sorry, everyone.

sorry

Before making this decision, what I couldn't let go of the most was not the energy I had invested, but the friends who had always firmly supported "Linux China". Including the 174 readers who "have read almost all of your content" on the WeChat public account, as well as the viewers who often leave hundreds of words to "Hardcore Observation" on Station B, watching and commenting every issue, as well as the IDs and positions of those familiar commentators on the "Linux China" main network, they make me feel deeply moved and guilty. I'm sorry that I let you down and failed to live up to everyone's expectations and support.

grateful

In addition to apologizing, I have many people to thank.

First of all, I would like to thank many people who have participated in the community, including more than 500 contributors to LCTT and friends of the community. Special thanks go to bestony, geekpi, oska874, lujun9976, vizv, lkxed and other major contributors. The "Linux China" open source community is actually yours, everyone's, not mine. It is my honor to share such a wonderful memory with you all. Here, I cannot count all the contributors one by one. You can see the list and contribution amount of all LCTT contributors at https://linux.cn/lctt-list.

Secondly, I would like to thank the many companies that have helped us during the growth of "Linux China". This includes Qiniu Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, UCloud, Tencent Cloud, EasyStack, Huawei, ByteDance, Qingyun, Ma Ge Education, Teacher Liu Xuan, etc., as well as friends who I can’t remember all at the moment. They have all helped us along the way over the years.

Finally, I would like to thank those who have supported "Linux China" whose names I may not know at all, as I said, "every click and share you make is a support for us" readers, and those who can always recognize me at community events.

Next

After this farewell letter is sent, unless there are special circumstances, I will stop publishing content on the main network, public account, video account, Bilibili and other channels of "Linux China".

During the Spring Festival, I will package all the articles published by "Linux China" into an e-book for everyone to collect and use, so you don't have to use a web crawler to crawl it yourself. Of course, our mainnet and official account will remain accessible for a long time, but I may no longer update them.

As for me personally?

This year I plan to lie down for a few months, and then I plan to go out for a walk alone, maybe by self-driving or on a motorcycle tour, to find the meaning of life. I may post my itinerary on my video account "Hardcore Laowang", or I may stay somewhere, maybe pass through your city, maybe we can have a good time over wine (water).

Goodbye, everyone.