"Please don't discuss other, competing products here"

["David Christensen" <dpchrist at holgerdanske dot com>]

Christopher Faylor wrote:
> Please don't discuss other, competing products here.

Looking at:

    http://cygwin.com/lists.html

I see the paragraph:

    Finally, make sure when you send a message to a Cygwin list that it
    actually has something to do with Cygwin. ...

I agree with a policy that posters need to respect the limited time and
resources of the Cygwin project and of their fellow mailing list users.
But, I do think discussion of competing "GNU tools on Windows" on the Cygwin
mailing lists is both relevant and beneficial to the Cygwin project:

1.  Knowing what the "other guys" are doing and what "real users" think
    about Cygwin and the competition is valuable information -- it
    represents free "marketing study data" and "feature wish lists" for
    Cygwin developers and free "product comparisons" and "real-life
    experiences" for Cygwin users and prospective Cygwin users.

2.  Seeding the Cygwin mailing lists with keywords from competing
    products will result in search engine hits that may win over
    converts.

3.  Last but not least, the open-source software (OSS) movement used to
    have at its core the concept of "Freedom", including "Freedom of
    Speech".  OSS projects were simply assumed by the OSS community to
    allow freedom of speech (within reason); those that did not invited
    protest and/or rejection.


David


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