I'm obviously missing a lot of the context here, but in my country (New Zealand) there is something called the Fair Trading Act.
My understanding from reading the Commerce Commission web site is that - false or misleading representations about goods or services or the availability of goods are against the law - "The penalties for breaching the Act can be severe" (Grant Harris). - obviously wild exaggerations made to be funny are sort of OK, but if anyone falls for them you could find this tested in court - "Any claims made to bolster the image of a business or its products or services must be accurate." - "The Act applies even when there was no intention to breach the Act". (Grant Harris again.) http://www.comcom.govt.nz/fair-trading/fair-trading-act-fact-sheets/claiming-you-re-something-you-re-not/ The Fair Trading Act was passed as part of a program of market liberalisation and in order to foster competition and market efficiency, and the majority of the cases have been trader-to- trader. Why mention this? Because it's not just places where consumer protection is high-ranked that have such laws; it's also places that are gung-ho about free markets and competition and want to protect businesses. Law in the USA varies from state to state. For California, see https://www.truthinadvertising.org/california/ (which has a navbar on the right for other states). Me, I think Pharo is good enough to "sell" on its merits without any exaggerations. (If you could combine the great looks of Dolphin Smalltalk with the great features of Pharo, drool...)
