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The simple answer is "because money". It costs quite a bit to be able to do any of that. And that's not something most open source projects or developers can c

The simple answer is "because money". It costs quite a bit to be able to do any of that. And that's not something most open source projects or developers can come anywhere close to affording. Source: I run PortableApps.com and have had my GPL software used illegally by competing projects in other countries as well as at least one Fortune 500 here in the states.

phkahler 12y ago
Copyright violation carries heavy penalties these days, particularly in the US. If you can prove it, get a lawyer to work on contingency. IANAL but this seems easy.
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  It carries heavy penalties for large players with on-staff or retained legal firms. For the rest of us, you can forget about it (source: multiple lawyers, none of whom would work on contingency for a case like this). I can absolutely prove it, but it doesn't matter. At least I got them to stop but not before they'd passed off my software as someone else's to millions.
  - srathbun 12y ago
    That's a shame. I've used portableApps and it is a nice piece of software.
arcatek 12y ago
You made PortableApps ? I used it like seven years ago, and it was great - it helped me and a few others to learn programming on our school computers which, as you might guess, didn't have a lot of tools dedicated to that purpose.
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  Glad you liked it. We're still going strong. A larger percentage of our users these days now use it either locally or on a synced cloud folder. Our platform installer even detects and offers to install to Dropbox, Box, One Drive and Google Drive.
  - tracker1 12y ago
    That's awesome, I've got a few things in my dropbox like that... makes it a lot easier even for those bits that I add to my windows path. For Linux and OSX, it would be cool to see similar things.. though I've seen some interesting things using Dropbox that may yeild a portable *nix app solution one day.
    - JohnTHaller 12y ago
      You can run them on Linux via Wine and on OS X via Crossover, Wineskin, etc. We check for running via Wine in our tools and work around a few bugs where we can.
- cmdrfred 12y ago
  Same here, love portable apps. Used it for the same reason at my old job. Was able to teach myself enough to get a system admin gig.
  - JohnTHaller 12y ago
    Glad it helped you out. I'm still amazed at the number of folks the apps and utilities helped over the years. And a number of our devs use the experience they gain towards getting a spot at university or a job as well.

phkahler 12y ago

Copyright violation carries heavy penalties these days, particularly in the US. If you can prove it, get a lawyer to work on contingency. IANAL but this seems easy.

JohnTHaller 12y ago
It carries heavy penalties for large players with on-staff or retained legal firms. For the rest of us, you can forget about it (source: multiple lawyers, none of whom would work on contingency for a case like this). I can absolutely prove it, but it doesn't matter. At least I got them to stop but not before they'd passed off my software as someone else's to millions.
- srathbun 12y ago
  That's a shame. I've used portableApps and it is a nice piece of software.

arcatek 12y ago

You made PortableApps ? I used it like seven years ago, and it was great - it helped me and a few others to learn programming on our school computers which, as you might guess, didn't have a lot of tools dedicated to that purpose.

JohnTHaller 12y ago
Glad you liked it. We're still going strong. A larger percentage of our users these days now use it either locally or on a synced cloud folder. Our platform installer even detects and offers to install to Dropbox, Box, One Drive and Google Drive.
- tracker1 12y ago
  That's awesome, I've got a few things in my dropbox like that... makes it a lot easier even for those bits that I add to my windows path. For Linux and OSX, it would be cool to see similar things.. though I've seen some interesting things using Dropbox that may yeild a portable *nix app solution one day.
  - JohnTHaller 12y ago
    You can run them on Linux via Wine and on OS X via Crossover, Wineskin, etc. We check for running via Wine in our tools and work around a few bugs where we can.
cmdrfred 12y ago
Same here, love portable apps. Used it for the same reason at my old job. Was able to teach myself enough to get a system admin gig.
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  Glad it helped you out. I'm still amazed at the number of folks the apps and utilities helped over the years. And a number of our devs use the experience they gain towards getting a spot at university or a job as well.