It is ethical to buy re-tweets/followers/likes for an open source project to promote it? What do you think, would something like this hurt in any way the creditability and PR of the project, if the project is non-profit and targets webmasters and developers? Developers and especial blogger developers tend to post negative reviews if something feels wrong to them. And this is certainly a grey area. I really don't want for something like this to happen, the PR is really important to me. What is your opinion?
It should be ok if they are targeted. It's be more ethical to use PPC to promote your site or hire a social media manager that could promote your site via Facebook, Twitter etc...
Unfortunately there are no targeted tweets for buy (as I know of). Sure it would be better to use PPC or hire a social media manager, but its a lot more expensive too. My resources are very limited since im funding the project by myself.
It's greyhat I suppose but it's certainly not blackhat as I know a lot of people that conisder themselves total white hatters that do this a lot for starting up their business to get awareness.