🚀 go-pugleaf

[Please excuse this non-technical message and also note the followup-to.]

Some months ago Bob Weiner (?) mentioned in comp.lang.eiffel a browser
for GNU Emacs that he was preparing to give away. My understanding was
that there was some consideration in his organization as to whether it
should be given away or made a commercial product. During that
process, I was asked for information about my work, my address, my
co-workers who may also use the browser, and so on. This seemed to be
presented to me as a way for Bob to organize his free distribution
efficiently. I do not recall the query mentioning that this
information would be turned over to a commercial organization.

Today I received Unix mail from cliffg%novavax@uunet.uu.net which was
a commercial for products (including the browser) for sale by a
company named "By Design Technology". I am offended that this use of
my information was made without my knowledge and that they used Unix
mail (paid for by the subscribing organizations) to broadcast their
commercial advertisement.

Maybe this is acceptable generally and maybe I missed some fine print
in the query. I am not a hard line GNUist, but I was really bothered
and felt misled. I have sent mail to cliff asking to be removed from
their data base.

I would appreciate hearing whether you think this is an acceptable
practice, and whether I missed something and/or overreacted. Thanks
for your input.

Patrick
-- 
Patrick Logan  uunet!mntgfx!plogan         |
Mentor Graphics Corp. 8500 SW Creekside Pl |
Beaverton, Oregon 97005-7191               |