On Wed, 2007-06-13 at 11:11 +0100, Chris Monahan wrote: > IMHO OpenOffice.org has an interest in stopping people from > misrepresenting the product, since this is bad for the reputation of > the program. > > People will begin to associate openoffice with scam artists and > support requests that never get answered. > > Ethically a lot of BS seems to have hit the fan over the source of > 'Cheap Office Suite' it makes me cringe when they promise 'full MS > office compatibility' and only '$19' when it's the same (if not worse) > than what you can download from openoffice.org > > Legally, I think (and don't hold me to this) short of changing the > license of OpenOffice, the only route available is trading standards. > Which is hard to do with software, and virtually impossible over the > internet...
Something i suggested a while ago was a Firefox extension that could come with or check against a hosted list of such sites and popup a note pointing out that the user can have the same thing for free from the OOo website. The big issue with this approach is that an extension has to be manually installed. Hence, the user must already be aware of OOo. Cat bites it's tail. ;-) However, the idea could possibly still be transformed. E.g., would it be too much to report those sites to the lists that are used by phishing filters? I guess the only other approach i can see is raising awareness, i.e. by sending stories to the usual press (computer and online magazines) and hoping that they do something with them. André.
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