open office for sale

[scrog]

I just ran across open office be sold for 47 bucks. I thought oo was freeware , maybe someone needs to check that out. Thats illegal right ?
heres the link http://www-openoffice.com/?hop=djdowd

[9point9]

No, it is not illegal and OOo is not freeware. OOo is open source (also called free software) which is an entirely different thing from Freeware. The LGPL licence which OOo uses allows for people to sell the software as is. If they modify the software, they must release the source code under the LGPL or compatible but still may sell the program.

There are many OOo resellers who are a very useful contribution to OOo. They sell OOo at a price little more than the cost of the CD it is on and are helpful in packaging up templates, macros and other useful extras for those who want them. Many also donate some money from each sale to OOo.

What this particular company is doing isn't so good but it is hard to see anything illegal in it. They have not credited OOo or it's developers but that is at most a little impolite. They are however a little misleading. They're not alone in this though, thinkall.com is another one which is also possibly a con.

A whois.com lookup shows it to be owned by a company called DomainsByProxy.com. If anyone has enough of an issue with them (possibly the people who hold the Open Office trademark which incidentally isn't held by OOo) then their address is:

DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
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