Libre Graphics World

Writing is hard. Just look at the post dates for my own blog posts to see what I mean. It takes discipline and hard work to put together any sort of non-trivial writing. If the topic is about a community as diverse and loosely collected as Free Software projects then the effort is exponential. Most Free Software projects don’t have a media/public relations person to interact with.

Today I wanted to talk briefly about both a writer and a PR person: Alexandre Prokoudine and what he’s doing over at Libre Graphics World.

Alex is the main PR person for GIMP and he’s also the guy I turn to when I need or want to publish something for the project. This is just one hat he wears (there’s many others), but those aren’t the reason I’m writing about him today.

Today I’m referring to his work as a journalist. Alex created Libre Graphics World back in 2009 to cover the rather diverse ecosystem of Free Software for creative professionals. The value in reporting at LGW is the time and research spent not only digging out the most interesting bits of news, but also taking the time to interview people in the projects. The reporting is nicely in-depth and explores various aspects of issues beyond simply copying the changelogs (see his recent article on the recent fork of Valentina, Seamly2D as an example of the depth and background provided in his articles or his awesome review of features for the GIMP 2.9.2 release).

I think this type of reporting and community highlights is extremely important to a healthy Free Software ecosystem. Especially one that focuses on projects for creatives and that spans so many genres.

Alex recently stopped running ads on the site and has now switched over to using Patreon to fund his activities. I think this is a great time to head over to his Patreon page and throw a few dollars a month to help him do what he does! Every little bit helps!