Hello,
I think you at PortableApps.com will like this idea. Although you reading this, might not know, many people still use dial-up, and I'm sure your download manager makes life a lot easier. But take a moment to figure how much time would be spent downloading ALL of your apps. Even with a great connection, it would be slow.
But consider this. Since the cost of flash media is so low, offer to sell to your dial-up patrons a thumb drive with your entire collection of software. I'm sure there are a BUNCH of legal issues to address with this idea. But maybe your charge is not for the software, it's for the thumb drive, loading it with software, and shipping it out.
I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know, but it makes sense to me that since these programs are designed to be run on a thumb drive, that they be sold on a thumb drive too. And I'm sure people wouldn't mind paying a little extra to have everything put together nice and neat for them, especially if you think about how much time it would take for them to download it on dial-up.
Again, thanks for the great apps everyone!
Have Fun! - Tim D.
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It's all happening
The main issues that there really are are finding good quality partners who'll agree to be partners, and sorting out the legal fine details for trademarks etc. As it happens, GPL software (which most of this stuff is) has no restriction on selling - if you really feel like it, you can sell a copy of Notepad++ to your next-door neighbor for a million dollars - it's just that he's unlikely to buy it at that price 
John T. Haller has got partners together, and I believe that within the next few weeks we should be finding out a lot more about this deal
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
Glad to hear it!
It's always nice to hear whether or not your idea is being pursued, even if someone else though of it first.
Tim D.
This would be great initially, but as a dial-up subscriber myself, the updates are what's a pain for me. Especially if the app goes through a bugfix and it updates several times within the same week. I've started one update, only to have it rendered obsolete only days later, by another update. So, beta's and alpha's are avoided like the plague for that reason. (Excepting they are small in size, of course, then I can experiment with them.) Apps like Openoffice.org, Gimp, VLC and
Gnucash take awhile to download, even with a d/l manager. So I wait for the final release and only after it's proven.
First of all, to get the most obvious and obnoxious headache out of the way, that is, the legal issues, I'm pretty sure you can't sell them as your own, but if you make it quite clear they aren't paying for the software, but rather the hardware and the service, I think that's OK. Look on the homepage, it says "any software or hardware vendor can use". If you ask me, that looks like an invitation for SanDisk or somebody to sell USB drives preloaded with portable apps from this site. But I could be wrong. John T. Haller's the main guy up here, best to see what he's got to say, and I'm rather new to open source, but that's just how it looks to me.
And there are people out there selling free software, legally. One of the big download sites used to do it. Fill up a burn basket with 700MB of freeware, demos, and whatnot, and they send you a custom disc. Probably done automatically, don't even need human interaction, just someone to network their end of the web site, a burner, a robot to drop the burned disc in an envelope, a laser printer to print the label, drop it in the mail out bin, and it's good to go. You pay shipping and handling but none of that is for the data on the disc. I've seen Linux distros that do it, too.
That's a good idea for big and complicated stuff, but nothing here's all that big. I used to have dialup, and I was a PortableApps.com user and fan for almost half a year before I got DSL. The apps are worth the time to download, even on dialup, every one, if it's something you'd use.
How much would you be willing to pay, anyway? The best deals on USB drives are to be had over on Newegg.com, as far as I know, and I got my 4GB Corsair Readout for just under $11, shipped, and it displays the MB free on the device. Real nice, and one of the fastest USB drives of anybody here, according to a topic where we posted our speeds. (I wasn't THE fastest, but I was up there.) Need more space? Mr. Haller said in another topic that he was seeing 16GB USB drives for around $20, what I was about to pay a few months ago for 8GB. Chump change, for what you're getting. Then if you don't know anyone with broadband, take a dollar, buy a padded envelope, another buck or two, ship it and a list of what you want to a friend who does have broadband, PayPal them $5 for their trouble, and for under $20 you can have a 4GB USB drive loaded with your favorite portable apps, or closer to $30, 16GB, depending on Mr. Haller's source. Oh wow, I just looked on Newegg, and they have an OCZ Diesel USB drive, 16GB, $25.99 with free shipping, and a $10 mail-in-rebate, so that's even better than he said. Wow. Suddenly my 4GB drive ain't so special... oh well, I still love it... So yeah. Cheap USB drives, Internet bringing good folks together, fairly cheap shipping, all adds up to a world of opportunity for the opportunistic and optimistic.
Now what I said to do up there... You'd save a few bucks if you just had Newegg ship the drive right to your friend. And you'd save about a week. But Newegg would be in a good position to just charge you $x to load it up with whatever freeware you want. Maybe Mr. Haller ought to partner up with Newegg and sites like it. Nothing I see stops Newegg from just putting the latest version of the PortableApps Full Suite on all their USB drives in the first place, though.
(Taken from the GPL v2)
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
...
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
It's all happening
Really!! I know a company asked to do that last October, I think that's when, it was a long time ago, and then there was talk of John doing it in November, and well here it is February. So bottom line, yes it's been discussed, vendors have tried, and there is nothing so far. It could be the economy or it could be that things here grind very slowly.
Another way to save download time though is to only download the apps that you need. Downloading everything just because it's free is counter productive. It takes up space needlessly that could be used to hold music, pictures, papers, etc and it takes up more connect time to download all the updates the apps need as they are maintained.
Ed
The thing is that this time, it's PortableApps.com initiating it. John has found vendors to partner with, and although the world greed situation (aka the economy downturn) has caused some trouble with it, it is happening. I will stick by John in that. It's just that it's taking time for some of the things to happen, mainly in legal issues and the fact that John has a life. If you wish things to happen faster at PortableApps.com, you could pay John to make PortableApps.com his career - I don't think he'd object too much to that. The point I'm trying to make is that when it is one person running a community-supported project in his spare time, things may not happen as fast as you like.
So please just wait.
As for the company last October, John commented about that that it wasn't really the correct channel of approaching about it - you don't know about how many companies are begging to be allowed to be hardware partners with PortableApps.com
There are also other things to do here; releases, development of the platform, support, and many more things in the background which you never hear about. It takes a lot of effort to maintain something like this.
I wish people would stop bugging John about things like this... me included
It'll come when it's ready!
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
It's understandable that things that are hobby based have a low priority in one's life, however when something that you have can create TENS of THOUSANDS of $$$ for you most people give it a higher priority than a hobby. Think significant other support, new car, new house, vacations, paid off mortgage, etc. Unless of course you already have a fortune aka Bill Gates.
Oh well, just my 2 cents worth.
Ed
But... when the bandwidth costs of such a venture would also be in the range of "TENS of THOUSANDS of $$$" to host the site in such a way that people would partner, then you have to do the maths very carefully, since a very small error means loss of significant other, selling car, losing house, unemployment, nowhere to live, etc.
If I were John, I would be very careful that I ended up with the right deal... unless you're actually offering to underwrite the risks involved in what he's trying to do?
Basically, there will be a need to be able to host freeware as well as open source for the type of agreements being discussed, which rules out the current sourceforge hosting, and, given the download numbers, the bill really will be in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, no exaggeration. It is essential that everything is done properly, and all the appropriate prep-work is in place.
The USB sticks would be sold with the sw already on them. Initally the manufacturer downloads the sw, 1 time, and writes it to the chips. Maybe once a month, or quarter, the manufacturer downloads a refresh set of sw to write to the chips on the assembly line. Bandwidth not a problem.
The USB manufacturers could also maintain a copy of the apps they distribute on their servers, thus impact here minimal.
A concern could be the number of people needed to support all the questions the new users will have and where they will look for help. And if they will know to use the Search option before posting.
I agree, if everything is done properly, the biggest concern will be where to store the $$$.
Ed
Manufacturers would want to be able to bundle non-open source applications.
Manufacturers would want to be able to make non-open source mods to the menu code.
Heck, we'd love to be able to host non-open source apps as well.
However, currently all the download hosting is done on sourceforge, which is free, but only allows open source
If non-open source was hosted, and John had to pay for the current bandwidth usage, that is users, not manufacturers, downloading what is currently downloaded, then the cost would be thousands of dollars per month. This is no exageration. You can easily get figures for the app downloads from the SF pages, multiply by the sizes, and get total throughput figures.
Manufacturers do want to bundle non-open source applications.
Manufactures will not make non-open source mods to the menu code. That's contrary to the GPL.
We're getting there. Funds are tight atm though, says John.
SourceForge is for open source stuff.
The current bandwidth usage of this site alone is already a thousand dollar per month. And a fresh quote from John in IRC, he says downloads at the rate of the current host (RackSpace) would be $20,000/month. And this is before we become even more popular
Really, if you're eager to have this happen fast, please donate, hmm, $100,000 should be a good start
Summary: time and money are the big constraints. And the fact that John has been unable to really do anything for PortableApps.com for the past two weeks because of illness. Remember that he is human. The time which he puts in is his time. The money which goes in is donated money - PortableApps.com would collapse within a month or two without any incoming money, I think. John puts in a lot from himself. Please be kind to him
He knows that it's in his interests to have PortableApps.com do well, and he's doin' his best - and that's a lot more, behind the scenes, than you ever guess.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
If you're looking for $$$ , would John be interested in selling this site? Say for $20,000? No more $1000/mo expense plus $$$ for other things including time to develop the apps. And he could still retain admin control over it's functions.
Ed
What exactly are you getting at?
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
Posted by Chris Morgan:
...you don't know about how many companies are begging to be allowed to be hardware partners with PortableApps.com
But...
The root page of PortableApps.com reads thusly:
...It's open source built around an open format that any hardware vendor or software developer can use.
Which is right? Seems to me if that many companies wanted to distribute PortableApps.com's menu and apps they could just do so. That's what the front page says. Or, am I missing something?
I'm glad if, as you say, Mr. Haller is out to do it right, but doesn't what the front page says mean that any hardware vendor can put the menu and apps on their flash drives, if they so choose?
The logos and names are all trademarked to John's company, so if they want to stick on their packaging that they're shipping with PortableApps.com applications, and have the PA logo, then that they cannot do without a licencing agreement with John.
Also, most serious hardware suppliers will want things like their own branding within the menu, as a form of product placement, especially if they want to bundle non-GPL or even non-free software with it, at which point things start to get a lot more.... complicated.
So, to answer your question, yes it is free, yes anyone can use it as-is, yes it works on pretty much any device, yes, the manufacturers could just ship it as it is now, but...
To do what they really want to, over and above just pre-loading it, there are legal hoops to jump through, and John has been working like heck on this for literally years, trying to get a deal that works right.