Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Is openoffice.fm associated with this site? It appears as an ad when you search for openoffice. They offer the openoffice.org free software for download asvwell.

Do not download software from untrusted sources. This product is named after its home on the internet. Nevertheless thousands of people trust payed google ads and catch all sorts of expensive office clones with or without malware included.

Not that I know. We always advise that one should download only from http://www.openoffice.org or as bounced by its load-sharer to a more local mirror.

RoryOF wrote:... or as bounced by its load-sharer to a more local mirror.

None of which uses a site name anything like "openoffice.org" -- at least from what I've seen.

Legitimate sites usually try to avoid names likely to be confusing.

I almost always log on to the local mirror in Ireland ftp.heanet.ie and get my download from there; this is a massive mirror that handles Ubuntu, OpenOffice and very much else. However it may not have beta releases. A list of OpenOffice mirror sites is given at
http://distribution.openoffice.org/mirrors/
If you are OK with ftp transfer you'll probably be able to find your way around whichever you pick (tip: bookmark it for next time). Because these are mirror sites you may have to navigate through multiple layers to get to the OpenOffice directories. A local mirror is likely to be fast, usually allowing transfer at the maximum speed of your connection.

OpenOffice.fm is not the official name of the OpenOffice.org project, therefore you should not download this product. The best place to download OpenOffice.org is via our website http://download.openoffice.org/ or from the Oregon State University's Open Source Lab (OSL) servers located at http://openoffice.osuosl.org/ click on "stable" and then "3.3.0" then select your operating system specific installer package.

Thank you all for your help.

I just decided to try openoffice and the first site i visited was openoffice.fm. I was also lured there by the google ad at the top of the search page.

I didn't notice anything wrong at first, but I started to get suspicious very quickly.
First of all, there was no version number for the program indicated on the site, which i found strange, but proceeded anyway. The setup file launched a wizard that looked okay at first, but the very second page of the wizard was offering to install a Bing toolbar and asked me to set bing as my default search engine. Then I noticed that the whole thing was labeled as "powered by Bing".
So let me get this straight... openoffice is a free opensource alternative to Microsoft Office, and yet it's trying to get me to install Microsoft products (Bing toolbar)... Why the hell would Microsoft sponsor a direct rival, or vice versa???
This threw all kinds of red flags in my mind, so I stopped and did a little research. I found the legit OpenOffice.org site and here I am now.
I didn't actually install anything from the other site, but in the short process I did go through, my firewall threw probably 4 or 5 warnings about this program connecting to the internet. Hopefully my security has not already been compromised in what little I did with this. After scanning the setup file (openofficesuite-setup.exe) with malware bytes and McAfee, it came up clean, but I'm still deleting it and hoping I didn't catch anything nasty.

I'm interested to hear anyone else's experience with this enigma, and hope my experience may help someone else.

toasterwater wrote:...
So let me get this straight... openoffice is a free opensource alternative to Microsoft Office, and yet it's trying to get me to install Microsoft products (Bing toolbar)... Why *** would Microsoft sponsor a direct rival, or vice versa???
...
I'm interested to hear anyone else's experience with this enigma, and hope my experience may help someone else.

Assuming I identified the enigma correctly...

In my view, the Bing toolbar does not in any way constitute sponsorship. "Parasite" is a better term (at least in this context).

Scenarios: The bing toolbar offered from the site in question may be what it appears to be, or a trojan horse (a modified, or "hacked", bing toolbar, helping the distributor to gain access to your computer, or gaining other rights or information.) Even if it's the real thing, the distributor may get paid for each install he initiates, or for each sale spawning from those installs.

Note that the above are guesses only. I do not know anything about Microsofts marketing model in this field, and I haven't visited the site mentioned to examine the subject in more detail.

I have not proved it conclusively. A "friend" of mine downloaded and installed from openoffice.fm to a win7 PC.
A day later she could no longer "connect to the internet".
Deinstalled openoffice.
Booted liveCD with firefox and no troubles. <<<<<<<<<<
Back in M$ Win7 land still no joy. network diagnosis attempt to fix, NG.
Access router via firefox just fine!!
Access webserver on a local system OK.
Attemp to access external site via IP address to eliminate DNS issue (Pretty sure I tried this. ) NG.

This system previously had a RAID mirror. Disconnected active Drive. Clonezilla C: partition from mirror drive to file on another system. Replaced original drive. (no restore done) Boot all is fine. Hugh?

I believe some windows updates got slipped in there too.
Ran Kaspersky liveCD no issues found.
Ran M$oft anti virus no issues found.

1) I can't imagine why a legitimate operator would register openoffice.fm, have it look like the real openoffice.org site without a "disclaimer"

2) DO NOT Download any software from an unrecommended "mirror"

Oh my! I don't know how this can be happening but, my above analysis is valid HOWEVER,
This Sunday AM same trouble as last week. Same analysis as previous week. YES, using linux and firefox was able to access any external websites!
Monday morning all is well. After reviewing Verizon router parental controls (firewall), and adding a test rule, a previously REMOVED rule was displayed which "Blocking ALL Internet Access" Sunday!
No further updates to this thread if all is OK next week.

My recommendation remains: Do not download software from un-approved mirrors.

DGerman wrote:My recommendation remains: Do not download software from un-approved mirrors.

Unless of course you find the checksum of the program is the same as that on the OpenOffice.org download page.
http://download.openoffice.org/md5sums/ ... d5sums.txt