I'm not one for pumping of anything but for the most part I disagree with your implications about feathercoin being shameless and pumping. Taking pride in one's work is not a bad thing in my view.
To say that something should or shouldn't be done in terms of marketing an idea (bitcoin, litecoin, feathercoin) is a matter of opinion not a matter of morals and how right or wrong it is.
Let's keep in mind this is the free market. People can choose to do and say as they want. Warren although I disagree with your implications about feathercoin I respect your view as we are all part of the free market.
Let's keep things in perspective when it comes to what is "improper" or "right" or "wrong".
One more thing, your bolded statement is your opinion on how things should be. Not how everyone believes it should be. Once again, a matter of opinion.
Taking pride in one's work is one thing but this is money. You are asking people to trust that the devs have things under control. To invest in the feathercoin network, by mining or holding/trading coins. It is clear the devs just copied the ltc code and grepped for a few strings. The developer clearly doesn't know what he is doing, and that should worry anyone involved.
This isn't something people should trust with their money. This is a marketing ploy. "Upgrade your feathercoin client to litecoin."
He unknowingly copied the alert key, and his solution was disabling alerts in 0.6.4.2? With active clients without alerts you make it
impossible to reliably alert the network in the future.
*actual image from feathercoin client*