That's just not true. The only thing that marketing means in this case is "having a product that others want to buy or use." If you don't care if people use your software then yes, you can ignore marketing.

Marketing need not involve monetary reciprocation. Just telling a friend "Hey, I wrote this cool new tool" is marketing in itself.

I agree that when I release software, I, by necessity, participate in marketing. However, and also by necessity, I participate in bodily functions of my organism. The fact that I participate in something doesn't make me automatically happy when these functions are mentioned in context of things I like and care about.

A trust fund Manichaean as well. :-)

If nothing else you sell yourself from time to time. You sell yourself to the employer (and have to do the right marketing for that), you sell yourself to girls/boys/women/men (pick yourself) you want to date with, ...

You might not like it, but you have to do it. Or else someone else will and you end up with the worst job (or no job at all) or the worst date (or rather no date at all).

I'm afraid you're mixing up work for hire (where I indeed sell my time to the cause I myself have chosen) with slavery or prostitution, where one indeed sells oneself. So, to make things clear, I do not sell myself.

Actualy I think you are just using a different definition of sell than is being used in this context. "to win acceptance, approval, or adoption" and "to cause or persuade to accept; convince" are what we are talking about when we say "sell perl" or "sell yourself." Which goes pretty good with the definition of market "to sell" if you use the above definitions of sell. You're of course free to still dislike the idea, but to say "sell perl" or "market perl" mean to me "help get perl approved, accepted, adopted by a wider audience"


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Eric Hodges