HI Harald,

I appreciate your care about the community and I won't post anything related to our commercial activities to this mailing list from now on.

But I should say, that I disagree with you in your assessment of my e-mail as spam. I always care about community and gauge all my posts from a user perspective, and I wouldn't classify this as a spam. My reasoning is as following: 1. If I'm a user of Osmocom, I'd be interested in meeting a vendor in person, given a good occasion. 2. If I'm a user of Osmocom, I'd be interested in announcements of new products, compatible with Osmocom (this is a general comment, unrelated to this exact e-mail).

May be we should create a separate (low-traffic) mailing list for commercial announcements, related to Osmocom? That might be a useful way to promote a healthy ecosystem around it.

On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 7:31 PM, Harald Welte laforge@gnumonks.org wrote:

Dear Alexander,

please immediately stop using this (or any other osmocom.org mailing list) for commercial advertisement and marketing of any sort.

If you check the history of this list, you will notice that Holger and I at sysmoco always have drawn a _very_ clear line and did never abuse the community lists for any kind of spam. Despite us funding the OsmoDevCon, paying for osmocom.org hosting, etc. The same holds true for the *.osmocom.org web sites. We expect the same discretion from other subscribers.

To be honest, I would have expected more sensitivity from you regarding the use of FOSS community communication channels for unsolicited commercial email.

I will immediately remove your advertisement from the list archives.

The only posts of commercial nature that I can recall are the occasional single-unit second hand sale of nanoBTSs and related equipment by individual subscribers. I consider that fair use, as it is of course in the interest of OpenBSC to enable community members to get access to inexpensive equipment for R&D, testing, etc.

Regards, Harald --

• Harald Welte laforge@gnumonks.org http://laforge.gnumonks.org/

============================================================================ "Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option." (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)

Hi,

I'm happy to create such a list, but I have a hard time that anyone would

be

interested in subscribing it. So if anyone reading this message is

intersted in

such a new list for commercial/product announcements, please respond to this message.

*respond* :-)

I am glad about every bit of information regarding SDR/BTS stuff, may it be commercial or not. So for sure I will subscribe to this list, as long as it stays osmocom-related.

I admit I'm extremely allergic to all kinds of

spam/advertisements/marketing,

and my view might be a bit more extreme than others. Anything that any vendor can ever hope to achieve by sending SPAM/UCE/UBE to me is that I get upset and will intentionally penalize him by not buying from him

because

he has sent me unsolicited mail.

My behavior is similar, just my tolerance level to sort something into the SPAM/UCE class may be a bit higher.

Regards, Harald

Ralph.

Holger Hans Peter Freyther wrote:

...

I admit I'm extremely allergic to all kinds of spam/advertisements/marketing, and my view might be a bit more extreme than others. Anything that any vendor can ever hope to achieve by sending SPAM/UCE/UBE to me is that I get upset and will intentionally penalize him by not buying from him because he has sent me unsolicited mail.

I am allergic to this as well. Just to test it I went to the asterisk website and looked how many times I need to click to end up on the digium website.

I don't want osmocom to become like that and I think your reaction was the right one.

I agree with you and Harald here.

The osmocom project is not a sales/marketing channel...

I don't agree with this however - I think the osmocom project, like all other open source projects, is a wonderful marketing channel.

But the marketing is very different - the marketing is simply a byproduct of high quality development effort. Whoever does good work becomes better known, which in turn makes it more likely for them to be contacted about commercial activity.

But, like Harald and Holger I too think that it's important to draw a clear line between simple advertisement "we can do things" and actual contributions "here's a patch which we've done".

Alexander, the way to generate support isn't to tell people what one can do, but to let them discover it on their own.

But there is also a bootstrapping problem, and I think it *is* in the interest of the open source project to help those who seek commercial products and services which contribute to the project to find the right suppliers.

On the other hand nobody has a vested interest in keeping such a registry up to date, in particular getting rid of old information is difficult. The best solution may be based on the code:

Someone who wants to sell products can work on visualizing how well their product works, in a way that is also generally relevant for the open source project.

An automated test system is a good example, with clear red/green indication of how well a given product works over time. Of course, building test jigs for actual hardware is quite a bit more difficult (read: expensive) than for software, so it remains tempting to send simple advertisements.

But please realise that advertisements do more harm than good in the long run, in the context of open source projects.

I'd like to point out that I think it was a good idea for Alexander to send an email saying that he was at the conference and inviting to meet up with anyone who wanted to chat - only the blatant advertising in the email was stepping over the line IMO.

//Peter

Hi Harald,

On 14 November 2013 12:36, Harald Welte laforge@gnumonks.org wrote:

Hi Peter,

thanks for your feedback.

On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 06:57:01PM +0100, Peter Stuge wrote:

...

I agree with you and Harald here.

To avoid any doubt, I have updated the mailing list rules http://openbsc.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/MailingListRules to include a chapter about spam/uce/ube. So at least from now on, nobody can claim that it was not clear that such postings are not welcome.

...

But there is also a bootstrapping problem, and I think it *is* in the interest of the open source project to help those who seek commercial products and services which contribute to the project to find the right suppliers.

If some OpenBSC users inquired on the list here about commercial support, I wouldn't consider a simple response like 'we are providing commercial support' wrong. I just don't think they deserve to be sent advertisements before they even raised the question.

...

I'd like to point out that I think it was a good idea for Alexander to send an email saying that he was at the conference and inviting to meet up with anyone who wanted to chat - only the blatant advertising in the email was stepping over the line IMO.

I agree here, too. If it was just an "I'm at this or that conference, OpenBSC users/developers interested in meeting up, please contact me" then it would be outside of a marketing/advertising context, and merely folks interested in OpenBSC meeting up.

Regarding a separate list for commercial offerings surrounding OpenBSC or other osmocom projects: I'm open for that, and at least two people have indicated interest in subscribing to it. Now we only need to find a name for the list to go ahead. 'osmocom-advertisements' is not correct, as the list is not about advertising Osmocom itself, but products using it / compatible with it. 'osmocom-products' is also not exactly correct. Any better ideas?

How about 'product-announce' or 'commercial-announce' (to include services)?

Best,

Andrew

Hi Alexander,

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 11:23:52PM +0400, Alexander Chemeris wrote:

...

Regarding a separate list for commercial offerings surrounding OpenBSC or other osmocom projects: I'm open for that, and at least two people have indicated interest in subscribing to it. Now we only need to find a name for the list to go ahead. 'osmocom-advertisements' is not correct, as the list is not about advertising Osmocom itself, but products using it / compatible with it. 'osmocom-products' is also not exactly correct. Any better ideas?

Simply 'osmocom-commercial'?

fine. List has been created.

Hi,

Regarding SPAM: Well, then let's call it 'UCE' (unsolicited commercial email). The typical list member is somebody interested in using or developing OpenBSC. By no means has he ever explicitly given us permission to send him advertisements of any sort. So it is unsolicited. and it is commercial. and it is email.

+1

I'm happy to create such a list, but I have a hard time that anyone would be interested in subscribing it. So if anyone reading this message is intersted in such a new list for commercial/product announcements, please respond to this message.

I can say for sure I wouldn't be interested and wouldn't subscribe.

If a company uses Osmocom stuff in its products, either I already know it from its contribution to the codebase, or I'm not interested in what it has to sell anyway.

Cheers,

Sylvain