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putty.org has been owned by the same person for 25 years, and has functioned as an unofficial download page forwarder since at least 20 years ago. He's forward
by sshine 1y ago
putty.org has been owned by the same person for 25 years, and has functioned as an unofficial download page forwarder since at least 20 years ago.
He's forwarding to Simon Tatham's page and always have; he's not providing mirrored executables.
The domain owner knows what people are coming for, and has forwarded to the right page for more than two decades.
I see that it may be a cause for concern because of our consciousness about software supply chains we have today.
But the domain owner of putty.org provides his own unorthodox but reliable service to the online community.
On the other hand, putty.net is just for sale. Which application is more moral here?
- mnmalst 1y agoSelling a commercial product by using the name of a popular open source tool is definitely not "more moral".
- sshine 1y agoLet's call it "advertise his own product", since he gives the software away for free and hardly makes money on licenses. I would say that it is. He is freeriding on the PuTTY brand name to popularise his own SSH client. It definitely has an element of being questionable. It won't win him the Nobel Peace Prize. But it isn't even a "dark pattern": He's not tricking anyone to make the wrong choice. He has provided a clear and unambiguous download path to the original PuTTY for two decades. Which of doing that and selling a domain to the highest bidder has had more value to PuTTY? I remember using the putty.org domain 20 years ago when I was still a Windows user, and remembering "I know this isn't the official site, but he forwards to the real distribution page, so there's no risk." And it never was any different. I find it a little incredible that the moral police comes around decades later, when I remember one sentiment back then was "Wow, he's making the effort to make PuTTY more reachable, what a nice guy."