[Catalog-sig] The "Softpedia" spam

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 6:28 AM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
[..]
>>
>> I don't know that we should be responsible for trying to prevent every
>> bad use of PyPI. I'm not even convinced that the Softpedia emails are
>> spam in any legal or ethical sense.
>>
>> It's not a mass broadcast of email: each email gets sent to *one*
>> recipient. Re-distributing the software on PyPI is legal under the
>> terms of the licences (possibly with a few exceptions). I think you
>> would fail to convince a judge that, legally, Softpedia is spamming or
>> engaged in any unreasonable action. You certainly fail to convince me.

A spam is an unsolicited email you receive from someone you don't know,
that tries to sell or promote a service or a product to make money.
Softpedia qualifies in this definition.

> I am not completely convinced either. It appears to be a legitimate site
> that people use to access FOSS software, with relatively subdued ads (except
> for the double-underscore popup boxes). I do notice that
> http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Distutils2/1.0a1
> shows 0 downloads at the moment whereas
> http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Programming/Libraries/Distutils2-56577.shtml
> shows 14. The python3.1.2 page shows nearly 10000. That much, if truthful,
> is good.
>
> If one uploads often, I see how the 'curtesy' letter could be annoying.

Yes that what happens to me. But well I am just going to drop it, it
seems that I am
alone thinking this should be prevented, and that Softpedia is a spammer :)