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I read somewhere that if you can read Russian, you could get a license for free (I guess it's generally free now). This is supposedly why many Russian competiti

I read somewhere that if you can read Russian, you could get a license for free (I guess it's generally free now). This is supposedly why many Russian competitive programmers use Far Manager (with some plugins) for editing code. This includes Tourist, who I am told is one of the world's best.

themerone 3y ago
It's been open source for 16 years.
guga42k 3y ago
As far as I remember Far was always extremely popular. As far as I remember before "free license" there were various cracks readily available. At some point the author gave up and said something along the line, I won't make money from "russians" anyway so please use this "license" and may be you will stop to produce those cracks! When on Windows, Far becomes tool to go if you are developer. Powerful file browser with shell and quick viewer and editor, also with ability to create shortcuts to dirs and commands. All together it creates this mouse-free flow which many devs like.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  > I won't make money from "russians" anyway so please use this "license" and may be you will stop to produce those cracks! Well it's not like they could afford it when the average monthly wage in the '90's was something like 50 bucks.
userbinator 3y ago
This and other 2-pane file managers in general seem to be very popular amongst people from ex-Soviet countries.
sobriquet9 3y ago
That's correct, at some point magic license "xUSSR регистрация" (ex-USSR registration) allowed you to register for free. Quoting from memory, the exact text may have been slightly different. The idea was to let people from former Soviet Union use the fully-featured version without paying shareware price they generally could not afford back then.
- bombcar 3y ago
  And since they couldn’t afford it, they’d write cracks for it, which would end up in the West. The idea was let them get it free, and then the desire to write cracks is reduced.

themerone 3y ago

It's been open source for 16 years.

guga42k 3y ago

As far as I remember Far was always extremely popular. As far as I remember before "free license" there were various cracks readily available. At some point the author gave up and said something along the line, I won't make money from "russians" anyway so please use this "license" and may be you will stop to produce those cracks! When on Windows, Far becomes tool to go if you are developer. Powerful file browser with shell and quick viewer and editor, also with ability to create shortcuts to dirs and commands. All together it creates this mouse-free flow which many devs like.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
> I won't make money from "russians" anyway so please use this "license" and may be you will stop to produce those cracks! Well it's not like they could afford it when the average monthly wage in the '90's was something like 50 bucks.

userbinator 3y ago

This and other 2-pane file managers in general seem to be very popular amongst people from ex-Soviet countries.

sobriquet9 3y ago

That's correct, at some point magic license "xUSSR регистрация" (ex-USSR registration) allowed you to register for free. Quoting from memory, the exact text may have been slightly different. The idea was to let people from former Soviet Union use the fully-featured version without paying shareware price they generally could not afford back then.

bombcar 3y ago
And since they couldn’t afford it, they’d write cracks for it, which would end up in the West. The idea was let them get it free, and then the desire to write cracks is reduced.