[Catalog-sig] The "Softpedia" spam

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Noah Kantrowitz wrote:
> 
> On May 7, 2010, at 12:47 AM, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> 
>> Noah Kantrowitz wrote:
>>> I think most FOSS authors are aware that putting their email in a package is effectively putting it in the clear on the internet. I think we have come beyond the days of "noah (at) coderanger [dot] net" and all those silly tricks that were popular not too long ago. If an author is excessively concerned about spam, they shouldn't put their email in author_email. Is that field mandatory now or something? Softpedia is a little annoying with the emails, but I've found them useful personally (along with versiontracker) when looking for OS X software before. Freshmeat is a similar index of FOSS projects, and I've definitely used that before. Is there some reason we are objecting to including PyPI data in other software catalogs? If it makes it a tiny bit easier to find Python software, I'm all for it.
>>
>> No, but the PSF should be asked for permission before using the data
>> on some other site.
> 
> Permission is probably not a good thing to inject, too much risk of being picky on who can use the data. If it is available to anyone, it should be available to all. I would agree that as a professional courtesy it would be nice if people would let us know if they are mining PyPI, but you are dipping into dangerous territory if you put a gate in front of it.

Why do you think so ?

The PSF would most certainly apply the same openness it is applying
for its own trademarks.

I believe that package authors uploading things to PyPI should be able
to trust that the PSF (being behind PyPI) uses this data with the
appropriate care.

The same is true if you upload data to Freshmeat, Sourceforge and
other such sites. Why should PyPI be different ?

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