[lug] Misleading FAQ for Linuxfreemail

[Neal McBurnett]

To: linuxfreemail

Re: http://www.linuxfreemail.com/faq.html

At first I thought you offered just the sort of no-nonsense mailbox
service I wanted, complete with IMAP support!

But it is worse than rude to not disclose up-front that you attach ads
to the bottom of every message sent by your users from your web
interface.

To top that off with this bit of misinformation leads me to
worry about your degree of clue and/or motives:

 Question: Does LinuxFreeMail allow you to send your mail with your
 favorite mail program?
 Answer: No. At this time you have to use our web based interface to
 send your mail.  Currently there are no plans to change this as it
 would be too hard to control spammers.

Surely you recognize the many benefits of a real MUA rather than
a web interface?

Surely you realize that it is possible to authenticate SMTP traffic,
which would stop spammers as effectively as the web interface?

Surely you are willing to educate users about the many other ways to
send email from other accounts with
	 From: user at linuxfreemail.com

E.g. it works fine for me to specify that and send mail from Netscape
Communicator on a home.com host to a home.com smtp server.

Or perhaps you are willing to keep Linux users in the dark about their
options in the hope that enough will believe your misinformation that
it will pay off in traffic?


Forgive me for getting upset about this.  But I do hold folks who take
on the mantle of the Linux community to a higher standard.

And I do think that if you come clean up front (in the FAQ) about all
the real options that users have and offer them something in return
for ads at the bottom of their email, you'll get a more loyal
following and grow faster and be proud at the same time.

E.g., offer more disk space to people who send email thru the web
site, with ads on it.

Thanks for getting a lot of your service right.

And thanks for listening...,

Neal McBurnett <neal at bcn.boulder.co.us>  303-538-4852
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/      (with GPG/PGP keys)