On Sunday 10 April 2005 10:39, Rod Engelsman wrote: >G. Roderick Singleton wrote: >>>And they are allowed to charge for the privilege. >> >> Strawman. Okay I'll bite. >> >> $30 + shipping is hardly reasonable for a product of which we know >> nothing. > >Actually, since by your own admission, you know nothing about it, > you have no way of knowing whether $30 is too much, too little, or > just right. Is any product or service of which you know nothing > valueless, a priori? > I think that can be answered off the cuff so to speak, having bought a couple of cd's full of 1000's of fonts without finding 3 usable gems among them, or several so called clip art collections, and only finding perhaps 10 of them which were worthy of my wasteing space on my hard drive for them on the odd chance I might want to decorate a halloween card with them. Thats about the quality of 99% of the offerings. And I can duplicate those, and have, out of the $5 bin at Office Max for maybe $15, look at them and truethfully I might have well saved myself the trip to the store (its a 60 mile round trip for me) and just tossed that $15 into the trash. I'd have saved the $10 in fuel burnt going after it for starters.
I've found many more usable fonts on the internet, free for the grabbing, than I ever found on such a cd. Decent clip art seems to be somewhat better controlled, but usable stuff can be found if you look, and use the right search terms on google. So what else is on that cd that I should spend $30 for? Top that with the fact that they've changed the name, and apparently the release version is also munged according to the other posters (or they cannot type accurately) and the matching of problems vs versions becomes quite difficult even for OOo's own authors. >>>>>Do you ask every user you help where they got the software or if >>>>> they have donated time or money to OOo? >>>> >>>>No, only those who wish to profit by others work without >>>> recompense. >>> >>>So let's say someone is using OOo productively in their business. >>> Not selling or distributing the software itself, but just using >>> it. Let's get even more direct... the user is a professional >>> writer who charges for his work. Do you discriminate against them >>> as well? After all, wouldn't that be "giving away [your] efforts >>> to [a] for profit enterprize for no pay"? >> >> THey have an obligation to go to their distributor to get support. > >Exactly my point. You apparently didn't understand the scenario I >proposed. So let's try again: > >I am the CIO or CTO of a large corporation. I have determined that I > can replace 50,000 seat licenses of MSO with OpenOffice.org, > thereby saving my company on the order of $3,000,000 annually > (totally fictional numbers). I download OOo from the website and my > technical staff deploys the product. I decline to contribute to the > project with either money or developer effort. > >If I write the list with a question, properly identifying the > release, will you answer the question? Am I one of the "scum > sucking bottom feeders who think they can exploit this list and me > to feather their own nest"? Or is that appelation reserved for some > slob with a CD duplicator that manages to make a few thousand a > year from distributing the program in a fashion you find > objectionable? No, I doubt you would get that sort of response, after all, you are going to ask a specific question, about a specific release version, aren't you? >> Considering there are many cd distributors listed who do not >> re-label and do support the project by providing cds near cost >> there is no reason for anyone to get a cd that is re-labeled. > >But it's allowed by the license. > >> Your problem seems to be that I must do what you do. Sorry that is >> not an option I would consider viable. I want to have the right to >> choose what actions I take. You, in turn, are also allowed to do >> that. Or are you saying that only you and others like you can make >> these descisions and the rest of us must do what you want us to? I >> hope not. > >Absolutely not, I'm merely probing the basis for your moral outrage > -- attempting to delineate the borders of what you find upstanding, > moral, and right vs. scum-sucking, evil, and nasty. > >> Now as to users who buy form Cosmi or any other such company, then >> they should take their problems to their vendor. They paid their >> money and took their chances and have to take responsibility for >> their own actions. I agree. >You are acting like they made a conscious choice to purchase >PerfectOffice over downloading OpenOffice.org for free. It's much > more likely that they had never heard of OOo. Prior to January, > 2004, I was completely unaware of OpenOffice.org. > >>>So what about the version that Redhat supplies with Fedora? I'm >>> using 1.1.3 from their repository, and I can see where they have >>> made a few changes. They appear to be minor, but it is still >>> modified. Can *I* ask you questions? >> >> I do not support it. It is not OpenOffice.org. > >Sure it is; it says so. They list OOo as part of their distro on the >website. The title bar says OpenOffice.org 1.1.3. They haven't > renamed it FedoraOfficePro or anything. > >Are you equally pissed off at RedHat? No, but if the problem is related to what redhat may, or may not have done, then I think this group's response should rightfully be that the questioner should nuke the rpm, and install the latest stable (in this case 1.1.4) and then see if the problem still exists. I don't believe that this group should try to second guess whatever redhat (suse, mandriva whoever) may, or may not have done, to their now obsolete version. If this upsets TPTB at one of these distributions, they should be reminded that the 'fork' is theirs to support when the question involves something they may have done in their attempt at 'branding' the product. >By refusing to answer the OP's question, which you probably could > easily do by making the reasonable assumption that the product is > actually OOo 1.1.2, what exactly have you accomplished? Have you > furthered the cause of OpenOffice.org? Have you slapped Cosmi's > ass? Or have you just aggravated a new user of OpenOffice.org? > Someone who is now likely to badmouth not only Cosmi, who may well > deserve it, but also OpenOffice.org? That too is a very real possibility, and the response should be measured in light of that chance. >Is it really worth it? > >Rod I said to Peter that I wouldn't write anymore on this, but it seems to have become a subject with a life of its own in the last 36 hours or so. Each of _you_ will do as _you_ see fit at the end of the day, and we've now read an excess of rhetoric & unwarranted name calling on both sides, little of which will effect your decision, so can we stick this thread someplace quiet, and let the conversations get back to 'on topic' again? -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) 99.34% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
