Untangle yourself from ethics
A workmate called my attention today upon the fact that when you search for ‘ebox’ or ‘ebox-platform’ in Google you get some sponsored links from our fierce competitor, Untangle.
Here is a screenshot of the ad:
You can see a full screenshot of the search too.
On one hand, I am kind of honored about the fact that a California-based company which has raised almost 20 million dollars in venture capital and has over 30 employees is targeting us (a self-funded company) in such an explicit way, it must mean we are definitely on the good track 
On the other hand, this reminds me of the time when Ximian started to play with KDE keywords … yeah, we both are developing an open-source product, but one of us doesn’t care about ethics that much.
BTW, we have a new shiny website 
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:56 am
why don’t you provide debian packages?
July 22nd, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I must have been under a rock at some point because I missed the whole Ximian story, but I went back and read it.
I have to say I don’t see a problem with either Ximian or untangle, legally or ethically, in either of these stories. Neither the Ximian or Untangle adds appear to be an attempt to confuse the user. They are quite clearly paid advertisements. Untangles ad simply says ‘if you’re looking for eBox, you might like us too (or better)’. I’m not commenting on the quality of either product as I’ve not used either, but I can’t see anything here even worth complaining about. I think you should feel good that they see you as a threat, or at least serious competition.
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Looking at the ad, I don’t see anything unethical about it. They’re not tricking anyone, not making any objectively false claims, or anything I would consider morally ambiguous. I do see some competition, but that’s a good thing. In the Ximian case, it did appear that they were trying to confuse folks, but that’s not what Untangle is doing.
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:44 am
I think you want to add a white background declaration to the website. Try it with a browser that has the default background set to something else and you’ll see what I mean.