I have warned before about the danger from para-sites that are cashing in on the popularity of the free open-source office software package OpenOffice.org. This example from today’s mail demonstrates it’s not just a theoretical problem:

I hope that you don’t mind that I send you this message. However, I want to point you to a rip-off scheme that exploits OpenOffice.org

I am myself an active member in the open source community and try to use open source software as far as possible (most prominently of course Linux and all the great stuff it offers). I am also a fan of OpenOffice.org and can only assure you that I try to use it as much as possible.

I am actually a bit embarrassed to admit that fell into the trap of a rip-off web page. All I remember is that I was looking for OpenOffice.org 3.0 and some how these guys managed to attract me to their Web pages. I did realize that I was misled and did of course then download OpenOffice.org from the official Web site. However, these guys still managed to get my data and to my big surprise they sent me the attached invoice for 96 Euro for a one year subscription to their service (which actually according to their TOS runs at least for 2 years). And this is the service of just providing open source software that you can find on the Web anyway.

When I saw the invoice I immediately sent a letter that I don’t want to have the subscription and that they should send me proof of evidence in how far access with my information was done on their machine. No answer to this letter but another invoice for another 8 Euros for additional costs.

All I want to achieve with this message is to make you aware of what is going on there. According to the Web page (http://www.opendownload.de/) the top download is OpenOffice.org and I cannot imagine that you actually are happy to see that people are running such a rip-off scheme on the back of OpenOffice.org.

Of course, I would be interested to know if I see anything wrong here. However, I believe that such things happening can severely damage the reputation of open source software and should by all means stopped as soon as possible.

Please understand that this message is not about money. I would be glad to make a donation of the amount of this money involved (see it as a punishment of myself to be stupid enough to fall into the trap of these guys) to OpenOffice.org

I would be glad if you could send me a brief message as a feedback so that I would know your opinion.

With best regards,

What can be done about it? very little, as long as search engine operators continue to accept money for diverting people to their para-sites.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 7:27 pm and is filed under OpenOffice.org. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.