I should preface this note by stating that I make a living providing
support for Open Source software, and do charge customers for media
if they request it ($5.00/CD), I am not sure it is fair to call this
a scam (I am not even sure it is profitable). I would not "sell"
Open Office.org, and we do tell our customers they can download the
all the software we provide for free, but there are folks who want a
CD in hand, who don't care to take the time to download or learn how
to burn a CD and, if you are using Linux to extend the life of older
machines, a CD-RW may not be available. As a weekend mechanic, I am
often surprised when I hear someone just paid $150.00 to have $7.00
worth of brake pads installed, but if you don't have the tools, the
time or the skills to handle the job your self, I understand why you
would pay for a professional to help and don't think the repair shop
is running a scam. I am not sure I see why software would be any
different.
Even on this list we see requests for paid support and requests for
media, if someone responds with an offer to provide the requested
service the reaction from the list is usually horror that someone
might make money from this free product, but as a business owner, if
my staff are not productive because they can't figure out a new
office suite, the cost of free software can very quickly exceed that
of a commercial package. If there was no support available, what do
you think that business owner will tell his peers about OO.o at the
next Chamber of Commerce meeting? Isn't it better that the customer/
user sees as many options as possible for both distribution and support?
Andy
Spitfire Computer Services
441 Beaver Street
Suite 202
Sewickley, PA 15143
Phone (412) 749-0162
Fax: (412) 749-0203
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.spitcomp.com
On Dec 26, 2005, at 4:36 PM, Eric Wood wrote:
On Mon, 2005-12-26 at 07:48 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I just checked on EBay, and the highest price I saw was around $8.
Most were
lower.
They're probably spending more money on listing fees than they're
actually making in profit. Therefor, this may be their way of
promoting
OOo. If so, they should have the key words "OpenOffice - an MS
Microsoft Office compatible Suite XP 2000 2003" in their title so that
people searching solely for MS Office would have this come up.
Ebay prohibits the sale of alpha, beta, pirated, and oem software
(unless you include some hardware!!). GPL (and other similar license)
selling is okay.
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/items-ov.html
-eric wood
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