Beware of scam sites
By Kazé on Tuesday, November 3 2009, 17:30 - Permalink
I was having a look at the referrals for kompozer.net and I found this page on TheFreeCountry.com. Among the list of free wysiwyg HTML editors, there’s this paragraph:
Nvu - Complete Web Authoring System
(Update: Nvu has been discontinued. Beware of scam sites pretending to be the Nvu website and asking for donations/support. The official site is gone, and there are no replacement sites. In the meantime, use KompoZer, which is just Nvu with some bug fixes and a new name.)
Obvioulsy, “beware of scam sites” refers to net2.com, which looks like Nvu’s official website. As such, it’s asking for donations/support for the Nvu project; since this site gets a lot of traffic, it probably gets much more financial support than kompozer.net itself. It does not mention anywhere that Nvu has been discontinued in 2005, and it only mentions KompoZer as an “alternative version”.
Of course, net2.com doesn’t do anything to develop Nvu and it doesn’t give any penny to the KompoZer project either: it’s just fooling donors and making money on the Nvu trademark and the good buzz that Linspire made back in the days. The sad thing is, the owner of net2.com is the former CEO of Linspire, which sponsorred the Nvu project.
By the way, nvu.com is not dead: it displays more ads than content, and it links to net2.com/nvu and kompozer.net (in this order). I would’ve preferred that this site doesn’t mention net2.com at all — but at least, it clearly explains that the Nvu project has been dropped in 2005. Ironically, this website is the main referral to kompozer.net (~3% of the visitors) after Google.
In the meantime, use KompoZer, which is just Nvu with some bug fixes and a new name.
This is a historical mistake of the KompoZer project: KompoZer 0.7 has been developed on an Nvu 1.0 code base, and the goal was only to propose a few bug fixes to the Nvu project.
The situation is very different now: KompoZer 0.8 has been developed on a clean Mozilla code base and it doesn’t share much code with Nvu any more. The 0.8 branch is taking a different approach: Nvu was designed as a beginner tool, KompoZer 0.8 tries to be both a good learning tool and to bring useful features for advanced users.
I’m very enthusiastic about the next development branch and the merge with SeaMonkey Composer, but we really need to get more visibility on this project before spending another year on it. Here’s a few things you can do if you want to help:
- spread the word about KompoZer
- please don’t link to nvu.com on your websites
- if you mention Nvu, please explain that this project has been dropped in 2005
- ask your KompoZer community site to drop “nvu” in its URL
- don’t refer to KompoZer as “Nvu’s bug-fix release”: the official motto is “Easy Web Authoring!”
Side note: GNU/Linux users, please ask your maintainers to propose KompoZer 0.8 in your favorite distro. Some distros still ship KompoZer 0.7 with GTK ≥ 2.14, hence the crashes…
I’m aware I’m terrible in marketing and communication. If you have any suggestion to improve the visibility of the KompoZer project, please let me know!
Comments
Regarding the motto "Nvu’s bug-fix release", you might want to review (and maybe update) your screenshots. At least two of them show what must be an older version of the site, which uses that motto instead of the current one.
I'd be happy to put a KompoZer badge on my blog -- are there any available at 180x60 (or about that size?).
I'll also run KompoZer as a featured Mozilla-based app again on mozilla.org soon.
David, you can find some KompoZer badges here:
http://kompozer.net/community.php (scroll down to Artwork)
You will likely need to edit them to suit your needs. I'm sure there is more artwork out there, this is just what comes to mind immediately.
Here, I GIMP'd up a couple of quick 180x60 badges, you can download them here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/3020506...
Just a suggestion, if you can have something like this as fedora provides http://fedoraproject.org/en/counter , I'd put it on my blog and suggest others to do same. This way you can update the image that appears, to show next release dates or other updates besides just showing the Kompozer logo.
The default WINDOWS download is .RU!!!
Damn it!! Can you provide a nicer download options page please? :)
Simon > good point. I’ll publish new screenshots ASAP.
David > I’m not a graphic artist, but I’ll ask for help about these web badges / forum banners / etc. Thanks!
chetanism > I admit that looks sweet! The main drawback is that our release schedule is: “when it’s ready” — at least for now. At the moment there are quite a few bugs for which it’s hard to tell how much time I’ll have to spend on them, but that’s definitely something I’ll try to do for the final 0.8 release.
I'm a graphic artist of "some" note. I'll take a look at what you got and if I come up with something appropriate I'd be more than happy to donate to the "Kaz" ;-)
Mark > your help would be very appreciated!
The only material we have at the moment is the SVG icon, the name (“KompoZer”) and the motto (“Easy Web Authoring!”). The 80*15px buttons are ready, we’d mainly need banners, 88*31 web badges and 180*60 buttons to bribe David Boswell. ;-) I think some desktop wallpapers would be neat, too — though it’s not the current emergency.
We’ve put BigMeanMikeRich’s buttons and the 80*15 buttons on this wiki page. I’m not an expert on licensing issues; I think it’d be fine if all these icons were tri-licensed (GPL/LGPL/MPL) but I don’t know if this is relevant for artwork — a CC license would be okay as long as it’s compatible with KompoZer’s tri-license.
Thanks for your help, feel free to mail me. :-)
Kaze > I'm flattered that you put my buttons up, even temporarily. I submitted a nicer button to David yesterday, I like it much better than the quick one I threw together originally. It includes the slogan "Easy Web Authoring" -- hopefully David will have it up on his blog soon, but I'd be thrilled if you put it up on your wiki!
http://rapidshare.com/files/3025629...
(Named kompozerBoswell because I made it up for his blog -- little did I suspect it would be up to par for the main site!)
I'll check em out and if the time presents itself post the results. Good luck everybody!
Taken from the Kompzer.net "Download" link
"KompoZer is a wysiwyg HTML editor using the Mozilla Composer codebase. As Nvu's development has been stopped in 2005, KompoZer fixes many bugs and adds a few useful features."
May want to get that updated :)
I have update the italian wikipedia page about nvu and about Kompozer. I have cut link to Nvu in my home page and i have make a new article about Kompozer. My old article about Nvu was trashed. New link to Kompozer home page in my Home page.
i did not check but you want to be featured on www.tucows.com, that is how you will be able to finish off nvu once and for all, establish yourself as the legitimate software and bury them by allowing users to choose your product over theirs, they will hands down and tucows will get you distributed very widely alongside seamonkey and whatever else is worth going for...
gl!!!
Kazé,
First, thank you for what looks like a great product; I just got it and have yet to start using it but it looks just like what I've been looking for.
I see 2 reasons why the NVU site is still getting action: 1) it's a good-looking, professional site, and 2) NVU is a pretty good name. The name KompoZer kind of evokes warez, which is not great. At least it did for me.
So my suggestions would be (a) a new spiffing website (you've got thousands of grateful web developers / KompoZer users whom I'm sure would be thrilled to contribute), and (b) a name that inspires confidence and professionalism. It's a great program, it needs a great image. Just my 2 cents
A+