NOTE: This is a continuation of a discussion branch that began in this thread of the NHUSERS group: http://groups.google.com/group/nhusers/browse_thread/thread/166cd3b0e77c9e35/056321a3ec570d3b
---- Frans: Uh....I'm honestly a bit confused by your response as I think we're going to have to declare that we seem to be "in violent agreement" on (nearly) all of these points. >From reading your comments, my concerns appear to be yours as well: I too am interested in an area of NHForge that can assist adopters of NH in finding commercial tools to improve their "NH experience" but in such a way that the NHForge site itself (and by extension the NH team) isn't directly involved in endorsing, ranking, commenting, or otherwise doing anything that would make it appear as if one vendor or tool was better/worse than any other vendor/tool (e.g., NH is able to maintain its neutrality). My list of 'principles' that I tried to enumerate in my post seemed (to me, at least) a reasonable set of guidelines to enable us to achieve exactly those goals (providing visibility for such offerings while maintaining neutrality). I think remaining neutral is 'good practice' in re: NH's relation with commercial tools/projects, but frankly I think its equally good practice in re: NH's relation with open-source and/or free tools/projects as well (e.g., I think it equally inappropriate for NH to be 'recommending' one OSS tool over another -- just as with commercial offerings). My suggestion was to find a way to list such products/vendors without appearing to 'endorse' or 'rank' them in any manner. I don't think I said (and I certainly didn't mean to inadvertently imply) that there is no place in the NH ecosystem for commercial offerings -- quite the reverse, in fact. I was merely trying to suggest that whatever manner is decided upon to attempt to increase 'visibility' of such things on the NHForge site be accomplished in such a way that NH's neutrality towards any of these offerings remain intact. I certainly recognize that one level of such imperfect neutrality will be instantly sacrificed merely by listing a product/vendor on the NHForge site, but that's why I indicated that it needed to be very clear to any vendor HOW to get their product listed should they want to do so (e.g., so that it wasn't made to appear that the listed vendors/products were in any way part of an "elite club" that over vendors were unable to 'join'). I hope this serves to clarify the intent of my comments (even if it appears I wasn't entirely clear in my prior content). -Steve B.
