Re: announcements

[Jonathan Larmour <jifl at jifvik dot org>]

[ #define MAINTAINERHAT 1 ]

I should also remind folks that this list is publically archived.

Alex Schuilenburg wrote:
> Hi again
>
> Gary Thomas wrote:
> > Alex,
> >
> > I would very much like for you to make public clarification of your
> > announcement, as you have done to me privately.
> >
> > The things I find misleading or missing are:
> >  * This offer is not coming from the maintainers [at large]
> >  * Proceeds are to go toward test farm improvements
> >  * The CDROM contents will be available for [free] download
> > All that was present in your text was the [seemingly] commercial plug.
> >
> > If the above statements are indeed true, I think that they should be
> > part of the public information.  Even the web page mentioned in
> > the announcement has nothing to say about them, only how to order.
>
>
> Firstly, IMHO putting out a clarification as per my previous response 
> may appear to indicate a rift between the maintainers at eCosCentric and 
> the rest of the maintainers.

I don't think it does. A simple quick clarification sounds like a good idea.

> As far as I know this is not the case. 
> There is certainly competition between Mind and eCosCentric, but that is 
> a seperate issue. How much is your request influenced by your 
> relationship with Mind?

Although I didn't catch it when I read the message, I can see how it can 
be read that way. A simple short follow-up will do no harm.

> If I were to make any further clarification, I would probably just 
> reiterate:
>
>   eCosCentric, in conjunction with all the eCos maintainers employed by
>   eCosCentric, are pleased to announce that they will be selling eCos
>   2.0 Beta Development CDROMs of the eCos 2.0 Beta release.

We've been discussing something similar in a private list. It could maybe 
be better clarified as something like:

eCosCentric is accepting pre-orders for a physical CD-ROM release of the 
upcoming public v2.0 beta. Note that this service is independent of the 
official 2.0 beta release from the eCos maintainers and when the beta is 
released it will be freely available for download to all.

*But* I don't think the whole announcement needs to be restated anyway. 
Just a short simple note that says something like "Just in case of 
ambiguity, the official eCos 2.0 beta release from the eCos maintainers 
will be freely available for download to all."

It would also be a good principle in future for commercial announcements 
to carry some marker like [COMMERCIAL] in the subject line, particularly 
for the ecos-announce list. Wish I'd thought of that before :-). Oh well.

Jifl
--
--[ "You can complain because roses have thorns, or you ]--
--[  can rejoice because thorns have roses." -Lincoln   ]-- Opinions==mine