Re: SPAM DB 1.6.0 has been released - now OT if not originally

gforestieri9_at_yahoo.com (Greg Forestieri) writes:

>>>>>The point where I draw the line, others may draw it
>>>>>elsewhere, is when there is a for-profit organization with a business
>>>>>license waiting in the wings.

>>I thought we were talking about your statement about a for-profit
>>organization and business licences, which is quoted above. As far
>>as I can tell there is no such setup for PEAR DB.

>Cost is irrelevant.

In your view - and you may be right - but I was responding to the text quoted above about it being unacceptable to have a 'for-profit organization ... waiting in the wings'. I wanted to show that in this particular case there is no commercial entity, so the prohibition in the charter of commercial messages does not apply.

>Is SPAM for a $10 database product less SPAMmy than one that costs
>$10000?

No - they are both worthless content and clog up the newsgroup. Spam (or at least how I think of it) is marketing gibberish, giving very little useful information, and focused solely on getting money out of people. If the spammers want to make money then they even have an incentive to make the message fairly content-free and not admit to failings. This is called marketing.

OTOH, a well-written announcement of a free software project can be a useful and relevant article on a newsgroup, and start an informative discussion thread.

Of course it is possible to post meaningless marketing drivel for free software too, but in practice it doesn't happen and the reason is that the postings are made by individuals (not companies) who have no financial incentive to resort to hype and cover up the real details. Further, the author of a free program will often be able to respond to questions about it on the newsgroup, which never happens with spam.

>The whole idea behind having more than one news subgroup is so that
>we don't have to sift through "material" we don't want to.

Indeed. In my case I am glad that we have a separation between .misc and .marketing, with non-commercial messages going to .misc, so that I don't have to sift through all the dubious 'material' on .marketing to find the small number of useful free software announcements. At least, this is the arrangement that the current charter suggests.

Other people don't like the free software announcements and they would rather not have to look at those (even though they are quite small in number) when reading .misc.

I think the way to keep both groups happy is to split the hierarchy:

• comp.databases.oracle.misc - discussion, but no announcements of any kind
• comp.databases.oracle.marketplace - commercially oriented messages
• comp.databases.oracle.free-software - announcements and discussion of free programs related to Oracle, but no spam allowed

-- 
Ed Avis <ed_at_membled.com>