In response to Chris Hoogendyk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > 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. 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? -- Bill Moran Collaborative Fusion Inc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
