Some Survey Says "Advertising a proprietary software" should not be allowed [LWN.net]

Some Survey Says "Advertising a proprietary software" should not be allowed

Posted Dec 20, 2009 8:00 UTC (Sun) by kragil (guest, #34373)
In reply to: Studio Audience Says, "Planet GNOME is just fine." by Lefty
Parent article: GNOME ponders its code of conduct

OK, let's spin a biased survey a little more:

What was the one thing with the highest support in said survey?

It was that

"Advertising a proprietary software product"

should not be done on PGO.

So how do you keep that from happening? Advertising is a vague subjective term and Silverlight, VMware and Access etc. are all proprietary.

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Some Survey Says "Advertising a proprietary software" should not be allowed

Posted Dec 20, 2009 15:43 UTC (Sun) by Lefty (subscriber, #51528) [Link]

Yes, outright advertising is something no one wants to see. There's no
disagreement on that. "Advertising" is quite a clear term: it's the presentation
of a product as part of an attempt to sell it to someone.

When pressed on the point of whether there was "promotion" of proprietary
software, no one, including Mr. Stallman, could point to a single instance of
any such thing.

Mr. Stallman then altered his position to suggesting that simple "favorable
mention" of proprietary software should merit a response from the Board.
There's no demonstrable support for that idea.

Since the "problem" that the suggested rule was intended to solve doesn't
actually exist, what's the need for a rule in the first place? Why go out of your
way to keep something that isn't happening from happening?