A.9.17 As one of our existing software vendors, can you just fill in this questionnaire for us?
We periodically receive requests like this, from organisations which have apparently sent out a form letter to everyone listed in their big spreadsheet of ‘software vendors’ requiring them all to answer some long list of questions […]
We don’t make a habit of responding in full to these questionnaires, because we are not a software vendor.
A software vendor is a company to which you are paying lots of money in return for some software. They know who you are, and they know you’re paying them money; so they have an incentive to fill in your forms and questionnaires […] because they want to keep being paid.
[…]
If you work for an organisation which you think might be at risk of making this mistake, we urge you to reorganise your list of software suppliers so that it clearly distinguishes paid vendors who know about you from free software developers who don’t have any idea who you are. Then, only send out these mass mailings to the former.
The greentext reminds me of this FAQ entry: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-vendor
I read only part of the URL and thought this was about puzzles. Never knew the guy made Putty as well