I ran across a site that’s selling something called Opal Office. The site, OfficeBestDeal.com, says the suite is compatible with Microsoft Office, but in reality it’s just OpenOffice! You can find that out when you open the program and it says on the first line of text, “OpenOffice.” Apparently, they’re charging $11.95 for it. Is this even legal?
The Dog contacted OfficeBestDeal to see if the app was truly different from the free OpenOffice suite and, if so, request a copy of the source code, which the GPL license requires. A spokesman for the company named Russ responded: “According to the GPL license, we can sell OpenOffice and call it whatever name we want. We have all agreements with the OpenOffice community management team. You can find the source code at www.openoffice.org.”
At least they’re being honest about it. In other words, Opal Office is no different than OpenOffice, but you pay for the download. This sounded pretty hinky, so the Dog spoke with Andrew Jensen, who runs one of the user communities for OpenOffice.org. Jensen said this situation is not unheard of. Many companies take OpenOffice and sell it.
“Legally, they have the right to do it, but it bothers many people in the user community,” Jensen said. Still, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Jensen said some companies that sell the product on CD actually provide a valuable resource for people who are still operating on dialup or without Internet access (provided the price is reasonable). Other vendors offer support for OpenOffice, which has some value. But many, Jensen said, simply provide a link to the OpenOffice servers and point customers to the community forums for troubleshooting.
It’s not clear what level of support OfficeBestDeal offers on the download version, but it does make a CD version available for $16.90—which sounds terribly overpriced given the cost of a CD today. The Dog looked online and found the same version of OpenOffice on disc for as low as $2.95 on eBay.
So, Marion, what OfficeBestDeal is doing is legal but probably not honorable, if you ask the Dog. If the idea is simply to provide users with a copy of OpenOffice, why change the name?
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EMAIL THE WATCHDOG If you feel you’ve gotten a raw deal and need assistance setting a vendor straight, email the Dog at watchdog@maximumpc.com. Please include a detailed explanation of your problem as well as any correspondence you have sent concerning the issue. |
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