To address Ted's (legitimate) concern, I would prefer that we adopt a more stringent (but one that can be administered based on reasonably objective criteria) policy on Struts website content -- no advertisements of *any* commercial resources related to Struts. Google does a far better job than we could ever do in making such resources available, and this would avoid the need for any judgement calls or unfair advantage to some commercial entities over others. Announcements about nonprofit activities (user group meetings), freely available presentations/demos/slides about Struts, or other open source software that works with Struts, would still be reasonable candidates for inclusion.
Note that I'm suggesting this approach just for the website (and therefore the snapshots that get included in the product by virtue of the way we create struts-documentation.war). The current policy towards postings on the mailing lists can remain the same -- the distinction is that it is clear who is speaking (presuming it's not an email virus forging the from address :-), and there is no opportunity for mistakenly assuming endorsement.
Implementing this policy would require a few more excisions to the Struts web site (and save Ted some work in the long run, since he does most of the "routine update" work), but not horrendously large amounts. The most visible change would probably be the list of books on the front page and the associated books.html page, since they are all commercial activities.
I agree with Ted on the "consultants" and "powered" pages.
Ted, would this deal with the criteria of your -1
IMHO, such a proposal would not be in keeping with the business-friendly attitude of the Apache license. It seems inconsistent that we would encourage commercial entities to incorporate our products within their own but then shun mentioning them.
But, more importantly, in the end, I doubt that such a proposal would meet the thinly disguised goal of punishing a certain individual. For example if an individual were to make a PDF of a book they control freely available, then, under this policy, it may be the only book linked from the Struts resource page. Thus, giving this individual more exposure rather than less.
Even without there being any change in the status quo, several of the items would have to be restored, since they refer to open source projects in which the individual participates.
And, I believe we would also have to remove links to any material on the Sun or IBM websites, since these are commercial entities too, who, like the individual's corporation, also contribute to open source.
In my experience, it's rarely beneficial to establish policies with ulterior motives. Especially for an Apache project like ours. Open source and intrigue make strange bedfellows. If we have an issue with mailing list postings, then that's the issue we should address. Temporary, and even permanent, subscriber bans from Apache lists are not unheard of.
If we were to consider a filtering policy for our news and resource pages, then I would suggest we look to the Jakarta PMC or ASF Board for guidance as to whether such a thing is appropriate and, if so, how it would be implemented.
A consistent and foolproof alternative to filtering would be to remove the news and resource pages altogether. IMHO, removing these pages would not be of service to the Community, and I would vote against the move myself. But, I believe that would be a majority vote, and so my -1 would not be a veto.
It's my feeling, that Google notwithstanding, a comprehensive directory of Struts resources is one of the many factors of our success. It's my feeling that it is appropriate for us to maintain these pages as part of the Apache Struts project. But, if they need to be moved, I can go back to maintaining them somewhere else.
It just seems sad to me that a vendetta against a sole individual means that the entire Community has to suffer.
-Ted.
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