Re: SPAM DB has been released

Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> writes:

>If someone doesn't aleady have your product information about bug
>fixes is irrelevant.

Firstly it's not a 'product' but a computer program; those are sometimes products if they are marketed and sold, but not always. If you assume every program is a 'product' then every release announcement must be marketing, but neither of these assumptions is correct.

Secondly (as discussed above) it is not 'my product' - I have no connection with the original poster. This should make no difference to the discussion but I hope at least it will stop you thinking I have some sinister motivation to make money by spamming the group and driving traffic to some web site.

>If they do have your product you have their email addresses and can
>contact them directly. So my conclusion is that trying to justify an
>announcement of a bug fix in a usenet group as a service is
>disingenuous.

I wasn't thinking of contacting existing users but of announcing in a public forum something that is likely to be of interest to many readers. Just as you can learn something by looking at question-and-answer threads in the group, some on-topic and non-marketing project announcements are also an interesting read. Personally, I consider that such articles increase the usefulness of the group; others might disagree.

Posting the announcement in a newsgroup also allows for constructive discussion of the program, recent changes, and how it might be improved. For an example of what I mean, see a recent thread in comp.databases.sybase:
<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=b13617edbb47cfb3>

If participants in this group feel differently about free software announcements then I can accept that but I'd hope they would see the benefit of such articles and not automatically put them in the same category as commercial spam and marketing.

-- 
Ed Avis <ed_at_membled.com>