Open-source goes awry?

One of the tenets of the open-source crowd is that bits are information, and information should be free. Going even further, many of the contributors have anti-corporate, or even anti-commercial, sentiments. I wonder how they'll feel when they come across Manay Software.

Manay is using nearly every sales trick in the book to harvest people's names, addresss, emails and phone numbers. In exchange, they'll send you CDs, one such set containing The GIMP, photos, clipart and fonts - likely all free or open-source software that's supposedly worth $229, retail. Who knows what Manay is doing with the information...? I have a hunch whatever it is won't make their customers happy.

The real question is, now that this precident is being set, how long will it be before every marketing "genius" on the internet uses open-source software as leverage to sign people up for their MLM program, harvest personal information or use it as a delivery vehicle for spyware, and what will that do for the reputation of open-source titles? Unfortunately for the open-source community, most developers haven't retained enough control over their intellectual property to do anything about it.

One thing's for sure. We certainly don't see this kind of issue with commercially licensed software, and I don't expect that we ever will.

Update - Jul 28, 2005
Armed with a temporary email address and a newly-generated virtual credit card number, I set out to get my free graphics CDs. It will be interesting to see what price I pay to receive my free discs (it has already begun with $4.95 shipping and handling). I'll post an update once I receive the products, and another within a week or two of that, to see if I have been spammed (or scammed) in any way.