This off a media release. Scoble seems to think its a smart idea but I’m not so sure…and no, I don’t want the free license!….

San Diego firm Vista Software has launched a new marketing campaign designed to have bloggers promote their software in exchange for a free copy of it.

The company is offering a free license of their VistaDB SQL database software for the Microsoft .NET platform to any person that blogs about their latest 2.1 software release. The viral element of their marketing effort is that within the blog message that is to be posted is a blurb telling readers of the blog that they too can get a free copy of software if they post the original message on their blog site.

“We created this blog marketing campaign out of necessity.”, stated Anthony Carrabino, President and CEO of Vista Software. “It is challenging to get product exposure in our software industry since there are so many products and solutions vying for attention from this very busy group of influential people. We are creating a win-win situation for bloggers in our industry by giving them a free copy of VistaDB in exchange for talking about it on their blog. Bloggers are free to review and post more personalized commentary as they wish.”