
Text file wins 16 software awards - iamelgringo
http://www.watchguard.com/RSS/showarticle.aspx?pack=RSS.16Awards
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huhtenberg
"Deja vue" I thought and lo and behold -
[http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/08/16/the-software-
awards...](http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/08/16/the-software-awards-scam)

August 2007. How lovely of Watchguard to repackage the article, stamp its own
copyright and publish it as "news".

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jeroen
They do link to that article, both at the beginning and at the end of their
story.

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xirium
More than 10 years ago, I made a website called UCACA [Under Construction And
Collecting Awards]. It collected about 17 awards. It was eligible for one
award because it had already had two other awards. One fellow noted that the
site met all of his criteria for an award (originality, fast access, good
design). However, he didn't give me the award on the basis that it would make
a mockery of his award. Others were far less discriminating.

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bld
A thread in the WatchGuard article, which I didn't see in the original, starts
in the 1st line: "...highlights the risky side of relying on freeware and
shareware for any mission-critical purpose."

I would attribute the risk more to a lack of knowledge and experience with
ones software than the free-ness or non-free-ness.

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hermitcrab
Indeed. I am the author of the original article. I was out to expose sordid
practices by download sites, not to vilify any class of software.

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DougBTX
The article says that he "had a third party submit his file to just about
every software aggregation site", it would be handy to know how many that was,
so that we can divide 16 by it.

~~~
jcl
It gives numbers in the original blog post:

[http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/08/16/the-software-
awards...](http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/08/16/the-software-awards-scam/)

"According to the report I received 2 weeks after submissions began
“awardmestars” is now listed on 218 sites, pending on 394 sites and has been
rejected by 421 sites. Approximately 7% of the sites that listed the software
emailed me that it had won an award (I don’t know how many have displayed it
with an award, without informing me). With 394 pending sites it might win
quite a few more awards yet."

"Addendum 2 -- 23 awards ‘won’ at the latest count."

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jakewolf
Reminds me of web hosting review sites stuffed with affiliate links. Of course
they're ranked in order of highest to lowest commission.

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johns
Shareware download sites is another thing Google has eliminated the need for.

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webframp
i knew i had read that after one sentence. thanks huhtenberg for linking to
the original.

