André Wyrwa wrote: > 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. >
I think you're right, André - awareness is the only real way to counter the scam artists. But in the meantime, we could do a better job with the distributors list. I checked the first ten in the USA CD-ROM distributor list today and found that only 3 actually sell OpenOffice.org CDs. Of those, two seemed great and then one was offering the office suite for up to $50 if you bought their premium online support package. (I emailed them about this service to see if it amounts to anything more than our Users list.) The remainder were 404 errors, out of business, or just plain not offering OOo CDs. Only half of these 10 even had links to OpenOffice.org. I'm making the assumption that the rest of the list is not so different. Alexandro already raised the issue of the large amount of effort it takes to maintain the distributors list. I'm definitely not suggesting anyone working on the project needs more to do. However, perhaps people like myself could help the Distribution project police the list to keep it up-to-date and free of the scams (I have no evidence at this point that scammers have gotten on the list). Either way, a condensed and accurate list will reflect well on the project. I should probably contact Louis Suárez-Potts about this. Just an idea, Trevor --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
