Would you consider it spam if someone manually went to a site, found their contact information, and sent them an email by hand? It appears to fit the same definition as "unsolicited", and yet, that is one of the purposes of a business placing their email address on their website.
I work in b2b software, where it's common for sales and marketing people to use publicly posted contact information for outreach (both buying and selling products). IMO, the formal definition of spam as "unsolicited commercial email" is somewhat broken in b2b spheres -- it feels a lot like "it's spam if I publish my information and you send me something that I don't want." The problem is the "something I don't want" is only determined after the fact.
I work in b2b software, where it's common for sales and marketing people to use publicly posted contact information for outreach (both buying and selling products). IMO, the formal definition of spam as "unsolicited commercial email" is somewhat broken in b2b spheres -- it feels a lot like "it's spam if I publish my information and you send me something that I don't want." The problem is the "something I don't want" is only determined after the fact.