Open Office Suite Scam
While doing my research for the post series for the Best Free Microsoft Office Alternatives, I came across several options and alternatives, however a scam website called MS Open Office Suite (msopenofficesuite.com) caught my attention too.
The website does not look fishy on the first look, however on closer scrutinization I saw that this website, which also ranked high for popular search terms, is actually a really good scam to make money quickly and sell a free and open source product to unsuspecting users.
This is a classic example of a eBay scam, where free and Open source software is sold to unsuspectingly users. This happens because many users are looking to find cheaper alternatives and may not be aware that there are amazing free software alternatives available.
Many people may literally fall for this crap and eventually shell out $29 or more to buy something that is absolutely free, hopefully this will alert our readers and help them from falling for the scam, do share this with your friends so that they can be aware of this scam and spend money on something which is free to use.
For those who are unaware, you can download Open Office Suite for FREE from openoffice.org, it includes a word processor, spreadsheet processor and presentation tool and can easily handle all Microsoft Office documents.
Ned Carey
March 5th, 2009 at 2:06 am #
is that much different form a book publisher charging for a book that has gone into the public domain and is available free on the internet?
Yet I would agree this is slimy. Perhaps part of it is because the people who have created Open Office have done so at great expese in terms of time and dollars only to give it away free.
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PerfectMOney Share Idea
March 5th, 2009 at 3:12 am #
at the first time Look this thread I dont know what is the scam about ,but then after I see the image,I know what the scam point is.yes it is free ,and yes actually it make the scam Envy.and perhaps he think “I wish I can make the OPEN office”I certainly will sell it $29 per package.oh boy.poor scamer
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Dintz
March 5th, 2009 at 11:52 am #
I wonder how many people actually fell for that
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Ned Carey
March 5th, 2009 at 1:11 pm #
Dintz,
I bet a fair number. With the right marketing and packaging it should be easy to fool people. And the price is low enough that people would take the risk. But clearly people would find out very quickly that they had been ripped off.
I thought that perhaps the license would not allow someone to resell it. here is a quote from the license FAQ
“Selling a copy of a free program is legitimate, and we encourage it.” Wow, they really believe in a free market free use, and the ability have complete freedom with the software.
PS I hope this isn’t duplicated, I had trouble getting the page to reload after commenting.
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