Re: [Bacula-users] Source Forge abusive commercial ads

[Kern S. <ke...@si...>]

On Monday 11 December 2006 17:10, Bill Moran wrote:
> In response to Chris Hoogendyk <hoo...@bi...>:
> 
> > Marketing claims always tend to be a bit sketchy, and getting marketing
> > departments to follow academic practices of source citation is rather
> > unlikely. However, it is possible that they do have a larger installed
> > base for historical reasons, aside from what you might see listed in
> > download statistics from Source Forge.
> > 
> > I guess a broader question for Source Forge would be whether they have
> > any stated policy or practice regarding targeting ads at competitors
> > pages within Source Forge.
> 
> Unfortunately, there are rules in marketing.  One of the more important
> rules is:
> 
> "Say anything that will get you customers, as long as the profit from
> the customers exceeds the cost of any lawsuits."
> 
> (Oddly enough, if you replace "customers" with "votes", politicians
> have a similar rule.)
> 
> I've noticed that this practice has been getting worse in recent years,
> at least in the U.S.  It used to be, if you had a "doctor" on a commercial,
> there was fine print at the bottom of the screen that said something
> like "not a real doctor" or otherwise identified the person as an
> actor with no medical training.  That doesn't occur anymore.  TV ads
> (in particular) lie outright -- they just do it in a way that their
> lawyers think it's unlikely they'll ever have a sizable lawsuit occur
> as a result.
> 
> The biggest problem, IMHO, is that the American public has ceased to
> notice and/or do anything about it.

Yes, well I can unfortunately assure you that the same tendency is much on the 
increase here in Europe as well. :-(

> 
> I mean, to bring this back to the original topic, if Kern complains (hell,
> if the entire Bacula community complains) it will probably cause very
> little to happen aside from a polite apology and explanation of why it
> is this way from Sourceforge.
> 
> If, however, Kern were to start publicly researching alternatives to
> Sourceforge, they might take notice, as Bacula is a pretty important
> project with a lot of draw.
> 
> I'm not going to suggest that you _should_ do that, I'm just saying it
> might be more effective.  If Sourceforge is unwilling/unable to force
> their advertisers to be honest, perhaps some other project hosting
> service would be a better fit anyway?

Just so my position is clear: I don't really like having commercial ads posted 
all around the Bacula project page, but can accept it to a certain point. 
However when I see ads for Zmanda that state it is the "most popular Open 
Source" backup software in the world, I sit up and take notice.  

As Chris says, possibly (and I stress possibly) they have a larger installed 
base (though I doubt it), but they were not saying they had the largest 
installed base, and the best statistics on popularity of Open Source projects 
hosted on Source Forge is SF's own statistics, which seem to imply that 
Zmanda is *far* from being the most popular Open Source backup program. I'm 
not claiming that Bacula is the most popular as there are a good number of 
other programs (IMO, not in the Bacula class) that are much more popular than 
both Bacula and Zmanda/Amanda.

Anyway, I would like to give Source Forge a chance to respond before making 
any decision, but if the misleading wording in the latest ads (not always 
there) remains, I'll definitely look into different hosting possibilities.