I feel disgusted...

English Open Chat
#1

I discovered this Software, XXX Amateur Couples items in Premier Products and Technology store on eBay! after a casual conversation with an old friend, whom I hadn’t seen in a while. The conversation turned about, after he mentioned his computer had contracted an annoying virus, and I proceeded to talk about Linux and the open source software etc, etc.
It was under those circumstances when he triumphantly showed me an office software he had purchased on Ebay at a bargain price. To my dismay, it was openOffice…
Office Suite 2010 For Microsoft Windows 7 2003/XP/Vista | eBay

I couldn’t believe that someone would be so depraved to charge for free software, and even worse that someone would be so stupid to actually buy it. After investigating further, I saw that it wasn’t openOffice only, I could Identify Calibre, the famous open source flight simulator, whose name I can’t recall now and Gimp. In fact, I believe all the software there is free software.

Flight simulator:Real World Flight Simulator Pro 2000/2003/ME/XP/Vista/7 | eBay

Calibre:41,000 E-books For LookBook, Literati, Pan Digital, Ect | eBay

Though the GPL license does not explicitly prohibits commercialization, it sickens me to see someone profit from the good will and hard work of others.

#2

Hi,

So What are your feelings regarding the sale of boxed openSUSE?

Many of the free software products are available at a price, and if they are cheap enough, it might be cheaper for someone with a slow or limited download internet plan.

Also, even if they were making a considerable profit, always remember the ‘free’ in free software NEVER refers to the price.

–
Kind regards,
Barry D. Nichols

#3

On 2011-11-19 17:26, Hanzdersion wrote:
> It was under those circumstances when he triumphantly showed me an
> office software he had purchased on Ebay at a bargain price. To my
> dismay, it was openOffice…

How much did he pay?

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

#4

On 11/19/2011 05:26 PM, Hanzdersion wrote:
> it sickens me to see someone profit from the good will and hard work of
> others.

they are not selling software–the software is available without
cost…they are selling disks containing free and open source software…

in other words they are providing a way to have the software if you live
in a hut in the middle of the jungle with no phone, no wi-fi, no dial up
internet, etc etc etc…

i have several versions of Red Hat, Fedora and others here that i bought
on home burned disks a LOT cheaper than downloading at my ISP inflated
download rate…

–
DD
dump Flash: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15797399

#5

you are wrong, Opensuse is not sold anywhere. There is a commercial version of Opensuse with a different name made by different developers.
So, First of all, you can not compare the sale of the legitimate commercial version of a software by it’s rightful creators, with the unauthorized sale of a non-commercial, non-profit software by someone who had nothing to do with it’s creation and simply wanted to opportunisticly profit from the work of others.

Many of the free software products are available at a price

you are wrong again. Trying to make money by charging for a product that the users will be allowed to freely distribute is business suicide. Unless they release it under a different license and not the GPl, in which case, the software wouldn’t be “free software” any more. No, it doesn’t work that way. The opensource software companies make their products available for free, or nearly free, but charge for support, thats where they make a profit.
Whenever you see a company charging for a GPL opensource software, they are not making a profit out of it, or not much anyway, they are just simply covering production costs, (DVDs, paper, ink, documentation, shipping costs, etc)

if they are cheap enough, it might be cheaper for someone with a slow or limited download internet plan

Now, you claim that this particular seller is simply charging for a service, not the product… If that was the case I’d had no complaint, and my friend would have not been deceived. However if you followed those links you surely realized, as it is explicitly clear, that the person selling the software wasn’t offering a simple “delivery” service. Notice how there’s no mention of the name of the software, or any mention of open source, He/she is charging for the software itself, as if it belonged to him, as if it was his property, and it is not. Is not his property, it’s our property, free software belongs to all. He can not sell me something that is already mine. He can charge me for the service of delivering it, but not for the product, which is what he is doing, and the price doesn’t change that fact.

My friend pays $99 a month for xfinity with Comcast. He has a 12Mbit/s download line. how do you think he felt when he realized he could have downloaded ~300MB off the web in 1 minute, for free, instead of waiting a week for a cd that costed him about $8.?

#6

really? http://www.ebay.com/itm/41-000-E-books-LookBook-Literati-Pan-Digital-Ect-/390364524315?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5ae389ef1b

#7

well he literally told me “less than ten bucks” but according to the shipping price I see, I calculate it was between 7-8 dollars.
I don’t think he took it very bad though. I’m much more outraged and according to the responses I’ve seen here, I’m the only one.

#8

On Sat, 19 Nov 2011 18:46:02 +0000, Hanzdersion wrote:

> you are wrong, Opensuse is not sold anywhere. There is a commercial
> version of Opensuse with a different name made by different developers.
>
> So, First of all, you can not compare the sale of the legitimate
> commercial version of a software by it’s rightful creators, with the
> unauthorized sale of a non-commercial, non-profit software by someone
> who had nothing to do with it’s creation and simply wanted to
> opportunisticly profit from the work of others.

Actually, Barry is correct. 11.4 was available as openSUSE 11.4 from
open-slx. Many places offer DVDs for the cost of media + shipping, and a
few places will tack on an additional charge. Just go to distrowatch and
look at the available for purchase DVDs if you don’t believe it.

The GPL doesn’t prohibit the sale of GPL’ed software nor of making a
profit on it.

That’s not to say that this particular site isn’t sleazy for not making
it clear that they’re selling software that is free/libre.

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

#9

On Sat, 19 Nov 2011 18:56:03 +0000, Hanzdersion wrote:

> really? http://tinyurl.com/798echt

Really.

Like I said a few minutes ago, it is sleazy that they’re not saying this
is Calibre, a free and OSS software package.

But without a list of the books provided, there’s no way to know if the
titles are just pulled from Gutenberg. The value may be in the books
provided.

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

#10

On 2011-11-19 19:46, Hanzdersion wrote:

> you are wrong, Opensuse is not sold anywhere. There is a commercial
> version of Opensuse with a different name made by different developers.

openSUSE is also sold. They add a paper book (which you can download as
well - in fact you probably have the html version installed), they give
some installation support by telephone and email for a period of time, one
or two DVD (double layer, biarch). It has more than the gratis version.

It is done by another group of people with permission from SUSE/Novell.
Actually an ex-employee.

> So, First of all, you can not compare the sale of the legitimate
> commercial version of a software by it’s rightful creators, with the
> unauthorized sale of a non-commercial, non-profit software by someone
> who had nothing to do with it’s creation and simply wanted to
> opportunisticly profit from the work of others.

That’s true, but it is not forbidden by the license. IMO, what happened to
your friend is a “fraud”. Not legally, but it is ethically.

> My friend pays $99 a month for xfinity with Comcast. He has a 12Mbit/s
> download line. how do you think he felt when he realized he could have
> downloaded ~300MB off the web in 1 minute, for free, instead of waiting
> a week for a cd that costed him about $8.?

Next time he will download. I sympathize with you, what happened is not
ethical - but it is permitted.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)