While browsing Reddit this morning, I came across an interesting post from user cyrus9020. His post can be viewed below, or at this link.
“I google open office and the first (paid) link is this: http://www.open-office.us/index.html . It seems to be openoffice from the pictures but i looked at the terms part of the website and I found this: ???You can download and use the software OpenOffice for this website totally free. However, you can not modify the software without permission.???. Wtf? this isn’t open source. I’m confused how they can legally do this. Can someone explain it to me.”
While there is certainly an interesting conversation attached to this post, there have been no attempts to investigate this site to completely satisfy this query. I couldn’t resist???
The Investigation
It was completely clear to me after seeing the webpage in question that is was not the property of Apache. Though it is quite deceptive. The professional appearance of this page is disturbingly welcoming to its potential prey. Take a look.