[vox] Question about OSS downloads for a fee

[Harold Lee]

It's really awful that someone would rip off the clueless in a "get
rich quick" scheme like that. But I think the best defence may just be
getting more people aware of open source software.

I think one thing that would actually be worse than the current
situation is if the freeloaders "fork" TuxPaint and re-brand it with a
different name (also legal, though they'd have to make source
available).

So at this point, maybe the best defense for would-be buyers is the
fact that they can do a web search for TuxPaint and find out that it
is free. In Google results, the first words of the text after "Tux
Paint" are "free download" so I think anyone who does a search is
covered.

On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 12:51 PM, Bill Kendrick <nbs at sonic.net> wrote:
>
> 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
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