Hi everyone, I have been using OpenOffice for a couple years now, and truly love it. It is a great replacement for ms Office, and I am delighted to find things I need in the menus listings where I expect them to be. As happy as I am with your product, I am still a very curious sort of person and am interested in trying other things, so I purchased a product recently called "Perfect Pro Office System 2007". On the box, they mention the names of the office compatible software in their package: Write, Calc, Impress, etc. Sound familiar? Naturally, I searched over the entire box very carefully, and OpenOffice.org was never mentioned. It irked me that they used the same names as you guys do, but then I guessed that products which are available freely on the web according to a general public license probably do not copyright the product names. Despite my concern about the identical names, I attempted to install the office component of the package. Imagine my surprise when nothing seemed to happen. I then opened the CD and discovered, much to my dismay, that "Perfect Pro Office" IS OpenOffice.org with the addition of a couple new goodies. Aren't the people at Cosmi required to mention on the package that they are actually supplying OpenOffice.org under their own banner? The name is mentioned absolutely NOWHERE on the package or inside the box either, for that matter. Can they do that? Clearly the implication is that the software inside the box is THEIR material when, in fact, it is not their property. If this is not illegal, it is certainly unethical. It does lead to an interesting question: Since Cosmi is selling OpenOffice.org under their own banner, should we expect them to support the product in the future with updates to the community at large? And second, is there something that can be done to protest this clear abuse of the general public license, to force Cosmi to acknowledge this fact? (There is a new version of the software on the shelves at Fry's Electronics, and I don't believe that the new package made any mention of the use of OpenOffice.org either.) I guess what bothers me most about this is that Cosmi is clearly making money off of the fact that they are "selling" an MS Office compatible product, as that is the product stressed most on the package (the items are highlighted in red on the back of the box). The box is typical of modern software distributions with a fold-open cover. Inside the cover it says, "With Perfect Pro Office System(tm) you will create professional-looking business documents, instant databases, eye-catching presentations, full-featured spreadsheets...even make, edit or enhance your own images!" But in fact, they are simply describing OpenOffice.org in all of the descriptions that follow. So how much work did Cosmi actually perform in developing the products on the 4 CD's inside their box? Have a good "Open" day! Sincerely, Bob Klimaszewski
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