Freespire's Google ads: "What is Ubuntu Missing?"

[Eric Dunbar]

On 02/10/06, Melissa Draper <melissa at meldraweb.com> wrote:
> Eric Dunbar wrote:
> >> I'm not stating that the actions of freespire are ethical. IMHO, they
> >> are not. Smart? Yes. Ethical? No. Quite often, these sorts of campaigns
> >> are not ethical, and for a reason. The potential defamation compensation
> >> might well outweigh the benefit that the unethical technique generated.
> >
> > Why are they unethical? They aren't distorting the truth.
>
> If Pepsi was to launch a campaign "Is Coca-Cola missing stuff?", do you
> think it would be ethical? No? My point exactly. What freespire has
> done, is not really much different to that.

I don't see anything wrong with it provided they weren't lying.

> Lets not start on the 'legal' mp3 ad that was going. Licenced support
> for mp3 fails to make mp3 usage legal in quite a number of places.

Can you clarify that statement!

> Did you even read the link for that comment? Google ads pointed to the
> freespire DistroWatch.com page. The freespire firefox and NVU also
> pointed there. This was deemed attempted tampering. Consequently,
> freespire is not popular in that part of the web right now. Attempting
> to undermine independant statistics that popular distros use, is low.

Whatever they did there doesn't seem to have any bearing upon the
current ad campaign, now does it? (other than to pattern but there is
no apparent pattern between a previous action and their comparison to
Ubuntu)

> In case you didn't notice it at the bottom of my previous email, here it
> is again:
> [2] http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20060904#freespire

Wow, you don't do your due diligence, now do you?