On 02/04/2016 10:31, Gerard Dumont wrote: >On eBay you can find OpenOffice being sold although it is freeware?
The Apache Software License 2.0 allows organizations to sell software at whatever price the vendor feels that they can obtain. For most of the software developed under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation, the norm is for third parties to sell their support services, alongside the software. At one point in time, there was a vendor offering OOo at US$50,000 per seat, per year. This fee included training and support, but I don't know how comprehensive either was. There was a vendor that sold OOo, and, at least in its early days, AOo for around US$20, that included either three or six months of phone support, provided the user paid for the phone call. For several years, there were half a dozen or so vendors, that sold a rebranded version of OOo, with "full support".(IIRC, their MSRP was around US$100.) However, that "support" was merely the regular OOo users mailing list. Technically, the license OOo used allows that type of customer misdirection. Whilst I don't think that that activity is kosher, but other companies, with have other codes of morality find that behaviour ethical. It has been at least five, and maybe even six or seven years since I've wandered through eBay terms and conditions of putting items on sale. The last time I did so, there was a clause that implicitly prohibited the sale of FLOSS software. If that clause is still part of the terms and conditions, then that might be an issue for eBay vendors. jonathon
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