Unpopular product announcement

[Richard Harter]

[... Is this line needed? ...]

	This is principally in response to an article signed Art Z.
and addressed as open letter to CCA.  SMDS is a commercial customer
of CCA; CCA is not responsible for any errors of judgement on the
part of SMDS.  If you wish to attach blame please address it to me,
the guilty party.

	A wise person once said, "never apologize and never explain".
I had resolved on a policy of accepting my lumps and letting the
matter die.  However, since I feel obliged to respond to the cited
article I may as well cast wisdom to the winds.

	I have received several items of mail (not many, but some)
which have been generally critical although on widely varying grounds.
I have replied to these, although in some cases the mail did not get
delivered.  If you wrote me and didn't get a reply, my apologies.

	A majority of commentors seemed to feel that product
announcements were OK, but that the one I put in was (a) too long
and (b) the news groups were poorly chosen.  The latter point is
undoubtedly correct; in particular net.sources was a particularly
bad choice.  Evidently it was too long and read like advertising
to a number of people.  The intent was to present the equivalent
of a product spec sheet.

	Some people clearly feel that product announcements are
inappropriate for usenet; others feel that they are.  The published
guides to net.etiquette say that they are.  The consensus seems
to be that product announcements are useful, and informative, but
don't do it.  If it is agreed that product announcements are
appropriate then it is desirable that the guidelines be very
clear, e.g. less than thirty lines, post in net.wanted (?).

	PLEASE address all further comments (if any) to this
article.  It is posted to net.unix only.  Please do not continue
to post followups to net.sources.  In fact, it would be appropriate
to shift any further comments to net.followup.

	Finally, to repeat, CCA is not responsible for and presumably
does not endorse anything I may have posted on the usenet.


			Richard Harter