Quote - I really don't see how putting your freebies through rendo's freebies section hinders you at all.

And what about all of the other great freebie downloads around the Poser community? Renderosity is seeking to make it so that the only freebies allowed to be offered here, or linked to here are those that are in the free stuff area here at Renderosity.

Under this new policy you can't post a link to any site that has freebies. The only freebies that Renderosity is now allowing to be linked from their site, and only in the Free Stuff Forum,  are those that are in the free stuff section here.

This means that we can no longer post links to freebies in order to help each other out when looking for stuff. It also means not being able to post "found" links like I tend to do when I am looking for something and stumble on various other interesting sites with nice free stuff offers.

As I've said before, I can see having a forum where we post our free stuff offers and any free stuff links, regardless of where those items are hosted.  However, to make it only exclusive to Renderosity Free Stuff items is obscene.

As mrsparky said, freebie providers should be encouraged because they are likely to be merchants in time. All this is doing is hindering and discouraging them :(

EDIT:

I just wanted to address one thing that I recall reading above somewhere. I think it was Jumpstartme2 that mentioned about the Product Showcase  Forum as an example of a specialized forum when defending the reason behind the new Free Stuff Forum and freebie linking policy.

I browse that forum from time to time and the posts in there are NOT limited exclusively to Renderosity Merchants. I see ads posted there for products sold at other stores. However, the Free Stuff Forum is exclusive to Renderosity freebies.

Given the way Renderosity is trying to isolate themselves from every other site, I guess we  can expect that that will soon change too and that the Product Showcase Forum too will become Renderosity exclusive?

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi