Shaun,

With all due respect, you should not be making these types of changes in a vacuum.  These decisions affect everyone involved in the project.
Congratulations on all the achievements, but remember your roots.  You did not get there by not listening to the community that has been promoting, and supporting DotNetNuke for years.

Please do not brush off real concerns as "conspiracy theories".  It is very disrespectful, and although you may not wish to acknowledge it, there are many people who feel this way. They just do not want to offend you and the others in control of the project.

I happen to be in a position where I can freely speak my mind, and let others know how I feel about some of the decisions being made.  I did this very same thing while serving on the core team for over two years, and I am not going to change now. 

If I am being overly critical of your decisions then that is only because I am trying to apply equal force to the opposition.

You and other members of the board (and probably some current core team members) would probably be very happy if I just got fed up and walked away from all this, and believe me I have given that a lot of thought.

On the other hand, I have received countless encouragement from many members of this community (and even some mebers of the current core team) and that brings me right back.

Now, this current thread is about a simple mistake.  I am glad that you owned up to the mistake, but I still see the reasons that you made it as misguided.  You are not going to grow this project any bigger by getting more back links that are not seen by humans.  The Google PR for DotNetNuke.com is already at 8, you are not going to gain a lot by taking it to 9 or 10.  What you might want to be working on is keywords and other optimizations that will help spread your reach outside of the DotNetNuke market.  In other words, it's already a given that you will get on the first page of Google for the term "DotNetNuke".  If you want to extend the reach then a much more effective way of doing that would be to decide on some keywords, and keyword phrases like "Content Management System, CMS, Website Portal" etc.. Then you should change the copyright output from the real back link at the bottom to include text with these keywords or keyword phrases, and also include these keywords in the title tag on the anchor.

As always, these are only my opinions.  Take them or leave them, but don't make me out to be some kind of nut because I believe in what we we have achieved together.

Thanks for your input Jeremy.  If you see my posts as just me wanting to grab attention for myself, then maybe I do need to try a different approach.

My original post in this thread was just an off-hand comment due to my frustration in not getting any constructive dialogue with the people making these decisions.
If that was too offensive then I apologize. But if it also has the effect of getting the attention of those who make these kinds of decisions, then I can't say that I'll never make a comment like that again. In that case I'll just have to accept the criticism of my approach.

I have to disagree with the thought that getting a response should not be the goal.  It is only through a response that any type of dialogue is established.

Now that we have a little dialogue going here, how do you feel about the original subject of discussion?

I have noticed that there seems to be more and more places in the code where we are linking back to dotnetnuke.com assets and/or places where we might be violating policies.

For example:
      1.)   In SiteMap.ascx.vb there was code added to make the DotNetNuke.com website show in the list of links.
      2.)   The new search features for searching the web includes an embedded Google AdSense ID that belongs to DotNetNuke Corporation.
      3.)   The new DotNetNuke Powered! program is being promoted as a way to build reciprocal recognition, but it is designed in a way that does not reciprocate fairly.

Is there any official policy on how DotNetNuke approaches advertising, so as not to make the application into an AdWare vehicle?

Would any core team member like to talk a little bit about why this was done and what direction you see going forward?