Guy Sells Open Office on eBay, LGPL Seen Crying in Corner
So I just looked on eBay and look what I came across.
With this description line
OPEN OFFICE 2007 PRO SUITE MICROSOFT WORD EXCEL + MORE!
Yeah that’s right. Someone is selling Open Office on eBay. Yes, the same Open Office you can download for free right now from the Open Office site. The same Open Office I just linked to about 50 times.
First I was struck by how asinine this is, then I was struck by how stupid the people buying this is [Ed: are - wow a grammar mistake while calling other people stupid, I’m a freakin’ genius lol] as it had 25 bids and sold for $61. Then I went to check this guys feedback and it looks as though he’s done this several times now and has almost all POSITIVE FEEDBACK WTF?
The weird thing about it is that since Open Office is under the LGPL this might even be legit, I don’t know my knowledge of open source licenses is fairly weak let me know if I’m wrong. Maybe this guy is actually a genius. Who knows?
Some Highlights of His Auction Listing
With our auction, and the MS Office alternative Open Office, you will not spend NEAR that price, plus…you get an unlimited license so you can use it on as many computers as you like!
Instant Download - No waiting around for a box to show up in the mail. Get your programs immediately after payment.
We Guarantee Our Sales!
Note to Ebay: This listing complies with all US Copyright law and eBay policy on digital items, copyright, and unauthorized or replica items. This software is distributed under the LGPL license and I am authorized to sell this item. Documentation proof available upon request.
Well, in the world of free-libre open source systems (sometimes refered as FLOSS) you are not only allowed to earn money, but sometimes urged to, by selling services related to FLOSS.
In fact, if this guy does host the files on a server of his, he just might be paying for bandwidth and disk space (not saying electricity, rent, phone, etc). If so, he is not charging for the software itself (according to the GPL ,LGPL ant other kinds of free licensing schemas) but on other services.
I also sell openoffice.org, and many other guys ant enterprises I know from first hand, and all of us provides support and services for it, so revenues comes from it, not for selling the software itself. And we don’t do software piracy at all…
There’s a sucker born every minute.
~P.T. Barnum
[…] on eBay to see if any copies of Open Office are still showing up on there after my last post about Open Office on eBay. Well they […]
Ebay is place where fools sell and fools buy…
there can be some great bargains too.
They’re going crazy. You see, i was just looking around on ebay and suddenly i saw it: LINUX for sale! lol.
http://cgi.ebay.nl/Try-a-Great-Operating-System-Linux-XP-Edition-2007_W0QQitemZ300164236439QQihZ020QQcategoryZ11226QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
(hope that works)
Have a look in the “Why Use Linux?” section, he’s telling us linux is “Much Cheaper than Windows”. Isn’t that cute?