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I’m deleting the old discussion here, since it seems a bit obsolete, and I want to start a new one.

There are two semi-related things I’d like to discuss: when a company should have an entry, and what that entry should contain. This discussion was prompted by the argument over the ThoughtWorks page. I thought it should be deleted because it had nothing to do with the Mac, but it turns out that I was wrong. If the original page had mentioned this in some capacity, there would have been much less argument.

First, what should a company page contain? I believe that it should contain: the company’s name, URL, a brief description of what they do, a description of why it’s relevant to the Mac programming community (make this part of the description if they’re really Mac-heavy), and links to development-related resources they may have. Example for a Mac-heavy company:

BobSoft - http://www.bobsoft.example.com

BobSoft is a Mac shareware company specializing in software for people named Bob. They have a small collection of open-sourced Cocoa additions at http://source.bobsoft.example.com .

Example for a potentially-relevant company which has nothing to do with the Mac:

FacelessCorp - http://www.faceless.example.com

FacelessCorp is one of the heavyweights in the Faceless industry. While they don’t create any Mac-specific software, they do produce a fair amount of portable open-source software which is a valuable resource to any Mac programmer working on Faceless applications. Their source page is located at http://www.faceless.example.com .

These guidelines serve two purposes. The primary purpose is to provide useful information to readers of the page. The secondary purpose is to avoid starting DeleteMe wars over misunderstandings. Providing details helps show why the company is relevant, and that the page isn’t simply spam.

Having got that out of the way, the second part is, when should a company have a page in the first place? I’m in favor of being fairly broad. Any company which produces Mac software fits, even if they’re large, commercial, and distribute no source code. Companies which don’t produce Mac software but which distribute useful source code should also be included. Beyond this, companies which are relevant to the entire industry, even if they may not necessarily have any obvious useful source code or other resources, probably fit as well. Companies which are highly concentrated on non-Mac platforms and which don’t produce any useful code, general programming guides, etc. should not have a page.

What do people think? I obviously am not dictating official policy here, but I thought some written guidelines might be helpful. – MikeAsh