[vox] Question about OSS downloads for a fee

[Bill Kendrick]

Someone just alerted me to Tux Paint's availability on
an ecommerce site ("tradera.com", run by ebay).  I've seem
it on ebay proper in the past, as well.

Apparently for 65kr (approx. USD$8.45) it looks like you
can download Tux Paint.  Kind of a rip-off, considering it's
available free-of-charge from the Tux Paint website,
SourceForge.net, and countless other places.

I wouldn't be concerned if the seller was selling physical
copies (e.g., CDROMs), since that requires some physical investment
on their part.  In this case, though, they're just taking advantage
of uninformed consumers.

Should I put some kind of official notice about this up on the
Tux Paint website?  (Along the lines of: "If you found Tux Paint
for sale as a digital download on a site like ebay, please be
aware that you can download it at no cost directly from us.",
as well as pointing out that it's well within the rights
(per GPL) for these people to sell the software, so don't bother
contacting us unless it's apparent they're breaking the rules of
the license -- e.g., providing a modified version w/o source, etc.)


I see this same person is selling digital downloads of The GIMP.
And in the past, I saw one person who was selling Tux Paint downloads
on ebay was doing the same with OpenOffice.org.  (They were also
explicitly pointing out the fact that these were OSS applications --
so I really wonder who their target audience was... SUPER clueless
people!? :) )

What do people out here think?

-- 
-bill!
Sent from my computer