FWIW, I find the founder's apologies in the issue thread [0] believable. Not as in "they were right", but more "they thought this was useful, realized they were completely off base, and it will not happen again".

[0]: https://github.com/OpenBB-finance/OpenBBTerminal/issues/1625

I'll be honest, I was angry enough about the email that I unsubscribed and blocked their emails. It’s a one and done situation for me. I personally have zero interest in any project that thinks it’s a good idea to scrape the emails of people that star their repo, subscribe them to a MailChimp mailing list, and send them marketing emails, as if this is Product Hunt (who also wouldn’t allow this without opt-in) and not a code sharing platform.

It’s great they apologized, but for me, it was a one strike, you’re out scenario. And it underscores what I see as a significant misunderstanding of why something should be open source. It shouldn’t be seen as a marketing funnel. And if the only reason something is offered as OSS is as a marketing funnel, gather your data somewhere other than GitHub.

Disclosure: I work at GitHub but had only just joined as an employee when this happened. Had I been there longer than like two days, I would have probably flagged the account and let the abuse team make a decision on it.

Nowadays we are accustomed of this kind of campaigns from everywhere. From the pure marketing perspective it is common.

Absolutely understandable. I simply wanted to highlight their response as it, imo, was not the normal "oopsie" one.

> FWIW, I find the founder's apologies in the issue thread [0] believable.

The comment thread here looks fishy enough that I am disinclined to give the benefit of doubt here.

they probably had a warning of mailchimp that putting someone on a mailing list without their consent is a forbidden use of mailchimp.

source: I worked with an organization which put a lot of people in their mailchimp mailing list

We did.

But that was after I received a SPAM email saying "Welcome to our newsletter" in my personal GitHub account when I wasn't part of that audience.

You can see my interaction with someone from our team here: https://github.com/OpenBB-finance/OpenBBTerminal/issues/1625... - When we realize what had just happened.

We immediately deleted that audience (which was our plan all along anyway), but then it was too late, we were trending on HackerNews and Mailchimp pinged us after. After that it was mostly damage control, as there's nothing we could have done to make things better.

It's not spam if it's targeted - that's marketing.

No one signed up to their newsletter. They scraped the emails of everyone who starred the repo and imported it into MailChimp and subscribed us all to a newsletter. That’s spam.

This is your brain on Finance, unfortunately.

Just like you receive marketing copy in your mailbox.

Merriam-Webster defines spam as: "unsolicited usually commercial messages (such as emails, text messages, or Internet postings) sent to a large number of recipients or posted in a large number of places".

The emails were unsollicited and sent to a large number of recipients. It's fits the dictionary definition of spam, despite not containing a direct advertisement.

Cambridge merely defines spam as: "unwanted email, usually advertisements", which this also fits perfectly, as nobody who stars a Github repo sees that as confirmation of wanting join a mailing list.

Furthermore, if this were marketing (it's an invitation into the community more than anything else) this email may actually violate the CAN-SPAM act. IANAL but I don't think it applies here as the email doesn't even offer anything, it's just begging for feedback.

Is this sarcasm? Can't tell...

No it's a ying-yang truth. You'll have arguments pro and con.

Unsolicited email (spam) is spam.

There's really no 2 ways about it. Targetted or not doesn't change that fact.

I think this was meant to be a dry and cynical observation that we probably all actually agree with.

I don't think they approve.

Think of it this way, if they actually approved, would this be how they would say it?

Maybe. Anyone who thought it was a great idea and generally liked marketing would necessarily be so different from me that it only makes sense that I would not be good at thinking like them enough to accurately interpret what they wrote. So I suppose it's possible that this is perfectly direct and sincere, but it just does not seem reasonable.

EDIT: From further comments below, I guess I got my answer. They actually don't see this as a problem. Oh well so much for giving people the benefit of the doubt.

I don't get this.

We literally came out and apologize.

https://github.com/OpenBB-finance/OpenBBTerminal/issues/1625 - this provides my initial train of thought. But the "Welcome to our newsletter" was never the email intended to be sent.

In any case, it was a shitty idea regardless. We apologized for it, but there's nothing we can do now to make up for it.

I was more talking about this comment being so downvoted than the original infraction.

Why?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spam

"unsolicited usually commercial messages (such as emails, text messages, or Internet postings) sent to a large number of recipients or posted in a large number of places"

Doesn't matter if it's targeted or not.

Thanks for the heads-up. Guess they don't put that on the front page.