Ok, so how do I say this?
I am not ashamed... but I am embarrassed.
What I mean is that I take full responsibility for this code - I wrote it ( so thanks to the earlier comment from someone about it at least being well written! ). And I am not ashamed because I wrote the code with specific intentions in mind.
As stewards of the project, one of "our" duties is to increase its visibility through as many channels as possible. Why is this important? Because the size of the project and community matters. The larger and more visible the project becomes, the more opportunities become available to all members of "our" community and ecosystem ( users, vendors, partners, hosters, publishers, consultants, etc... ).
For example, do you think we would have been able to secure a spot for DotNetNuke in the DevConnections conference this fall had it not been for our recent activity and project momentum? Do you think we would have received the 2007 Editors Choice Award from Visual Studio Magazine? Or how about even getting official recognition from Microsoft, in order that community members who are active in these forums stand a chance of being recognized as MVPs? As much as we have a great product which is licensed under a liberal BSD license, there is still a lot of traditional marketing efforts and management which need to happen. We do the best we can with our severely limited resources and due to the nature of the project, online marketing is one of "our" best channels to increase visibility.
When I added the node to the end of the sitemap feed, I did so under the assumption that those people who were willing provide credit to the project by displaying copyright credits, would also be willing to provide credit through search engines. As such it was wrapped in the Show Copyright Credit? logic which can be modified through the Host Settings. I hoped that adding the node would provide some additional credit back to DotNetNuke, raising the profile of the main site and the community, and opening up new opportunities.
So this gets to the embarrassing part...
When I implemented this in the 4.5.0 release, I tested the SiteMap validation for dotnetnuke.com. Of course the validation error never appeared ( because the extra node has the same URL as the site ). To be honest, I had no idea that there would be a validation issue in doing this. Well obviously I was mistaken ( I am not afraid to admit when I am wrong ).
And I certainly don't mind writing this post and providing a full explanation. I definitely appreciate when people report application issues, as it provides us with the opportunity to solve them. However, I do mind that there are some people who seem intent on twisting various unrelated items into some kind of sinister plot ( maybe its easier to think this way than to try and grasp the bigger picture ).
Regardless, I have now removed the offending code ( and logged it under Gemini 5765 - thank you Mitchell for your assistance ).