RE: ANNOUNCE - PerXML Released

["Robert C. Lyons" <boblyons@unidex.com>]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, Clark C. Evans wrote:
> There is a big difference between announcing
> the availability of open source software which
> I can learn from, and announcing the release
> of a new/improved closed source program which
> I cannot freely use, adapt, and modify.

For me, this difference is not important.
I use both open source XML tools (e.g., Xerces) and 
commercial ones (e.g., XML Spy). I first learned 
about Xerces and XML Spy from xml-dev announcements.

> If every XML related commercial product were
> announced here, the noise ratio would be
> extremely high...

Jobs, commercial products and commercial services 
are announced on xml-dev, and, from my perspective, 
these announcements are small in number. In recent
weeks, I think there's been more Haiku posted to
xml-dev than commercial announcements. :-) Regarding
signal-to-noise ratio, one person's noise is another
person's signal.

> Lastly, there is a captive audience of serious
> professionals here. A post costs us all a good
> deal of time ($$).

I welcome the commercial announcements that are
related to XML development. So, for me, the time 
I spend reading them is time well spent.

If you feel that you are spending a lot of time 
reading and deleting commercial announcements, 
then you could write a mail filter to help 
automate the task (e.g., delete message if the 
Subject contains "Announce" or "ANN:", except 
when the body contains "open source" or "GPL" or
"CPAN" or "source code" or ...).

If the list adopted Dave LeBlanc's suggestion 
(i.e., including the word "commercial" in the
subject line of commercial announcements), then
the mail filter would be very simple.

> Commercial vendors 
> are not paying for me to see their advertisements.  
> Are they?  Why should they be privleged with 
> advertising rights upon a medium which they have
> not built.  

I'm pretty sure that the owner of the list does not
prohibit commercial announcements. Therefore, in my
mind, the commercial vendors are not doing anything 
wrong. Of course, if the owner of the list decides to 
prohibit these announcements (or charge for them), 
then commercial vendors should respect the decision.

Best regards,

Bob