CompareSoft was founded by Michael Robertson, founder of Linspire. He sent an announcement last week detailing the marketing strategy of CompareSoft and why he formed the company.
CompareOffice is OOo. ComparePhoto is The Gimp. He rebranded the software to make it more digestable to consumers in the retail market as a strategy to increase market share of open source over M$ products. If anyone is interested I can forward a copy of his E-mail announcement to you individually or on the dev list. I am neither supporting nor questioning his company or motives. I am just clarifying the information. Rick Savoia Savoia Computer www.savoiacomputer.com -----Original Message----- From: Ciaran Farrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 26, 2005 5:34 AM To: dev@marketing.openoffice.org Subject: Re: [Marketing] CompareOffice - another OOo clone... > Just to make the list a little bit longer, here's another OOo clone > packaged with manuals and sold: > > http://www.comparesoft.com/compareoffice.html > If it is based on the OpenOffice.org 2.0 source code then it is under the >LGPL. It is interesting to see if they have the right license for the >suite. >The most enjoyable greetings I had a quick look at the comparesoft website - while there is no indication anywhere on the website, that the products being sold are actually open source, or that the source code is available, I found this in the "Terms of Use" - note that reproduction and dissemination rights are restricted unless "expressly stated in CompareSoft products licensed under the GPL or MPL". It might be splitting straws, but as far as I know OOo is neither under the GPL nor is it under the MPL - which means that, theoretically, one needs CompareSoft permission to redistrubate it. 7.1 The content available through the Website is the property of CompareSoft or its licensors and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Content received through the Website may be used and played for your personal, non-commercial use only. You agree not to reproduce, retransmit, distribute, disseminate, sell, broadcast, make available to third parties or circulate the content received through the Website to anyone or to exploit any such content for commercial or noncommercial purposes without the express prior written consent of CompareSoft, unless expressly stated in CompareSoft products licensed under the GPL or Mozilla Public Licenses. You agree to indemnify and hold harmless CompareSoft for your failure to comply with this Section 7.1. I also found this under the "Licensing" link: We'll let you in on our little secret... For the home: CompareSoft will work on all of your home computers. For the office: CompareSoft is bundled to work across the group of office computers. All CompareSoft products come with an open license; this means that you can use one copy (i.e., one install CD) for as many computers as you need! That's right, you buy once and install them anywhere. In addition, most CompareSoft products come with both Windows XP and Macintosh OS X versions in the same package! Where can you take advantage of this liberal license policy? CompareSoft products can be bought securely right here on our website! I'm not sure if they ship a copy of the LGPL with their software, but on the website, it sure isn't easy to find reference to it, or a copy of it -- Ciaran Farrell ========================== Tel: 00 49 911 239 6757 Mob: 00 49 171 792 6767 Web: http://www.babelworx.net eMail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
