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Vote for PortableApps.com in Lifehacker's Best Portable Apps Suites (Poll Closed After Cheating) Submitted by John T. Haller on October 25, 2009 - 12:47pm
Lifehacker is doing a vote on the best portable app suites and we're happy to be in the lineup (thanks to our many awesome users who nominated us). And we'd love to have you show your support by voting for us in the poll! Unfortunately, our competition contains illegal software (GPL, copyright, licensing, and trademark violations) and has stolen software from PortableApps.com (stripping off the GPL license, readme, source code, etc from our many portable application launchers and other open source utilities). So please show your support for PortableApps.com by voting today: Thanks! UPDATE (Oct 27): This morning, the competition cheated by using automated methods to place over 2,000 votes in under 2 hours (confirmed in their own forum). It wasn't unexpected given their past misdeeds (including violating the GPL and our copyrights) and how easy it is to cheat in PollDaddy polls, but it's sad, nonetheless. ( categories: )
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yay you're winning by loads
yay you're winning by loads
Matthew Feuer
WOO
John, i just have to say how good a job you've done
Language can speak for itself
Just wondering, why can't you
Just wondering, why can't you just shut down liberkey?
I'm sure a lot of other companies that own the freeware apps their distributing don't like it either.
Never trust an EXE, this means you...
Stats as of now
Duh...
Insert original signature here with Greasemonkey Script.
Voted!
Despite what I said in the other topic, I went ahead and voted, since LH registration wasn't required. Y'all will win regardless -- the best contenders are forks of PA anyway. And LiberKey's menu is nothing special -- what's the point of categories if each only contains one application? IMHO categories should be designed so that if you have one or two open, you can still see all the categories. That's an even balance. To achieve that, when I used the MOD, I had a folder called Other for stuff I didn't use often, but didn't want to hide. LiberKey looks like a shovelware pack -- a few gems, but a lot of excess baggage. And if they're in violation of licenses, it'd be for the best for people to just stick with something 100% legal. Warez is a pretty slippery slope. Justifying license violations isn't far behind cheating timed trials or emulating console games, then... well, y'all know where that road can lead, and the best thing about open source is that you can get good quality software for free, so stealing other software becomes unnecessary.
Congratulations on your imminent victory.
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yeah
your wining right now
PortableApps Suite 51% (2,265 votes)
60\/\/ 2 /\/\3 4 1 4/\/\ 12007
bow to me for i am root
Voted
Voted for Portable Apps ;o)
And you?
Voted
I voted too!
Portable Linux
Stone me if you will, but my vote would be for portable Linux. I didn't vote for it though because I find it unfair to include the entire family in one. I also don't think that it really belongs in the competition because the is a portable application competition, not portable OS.
Anyways, hands down you win out of what actually belongs here... I thought it interesting that I didn't even see U3 software.
I voted!!
I just voted... PA.c of course!!
Here's the stats as of right now... (re-arranged, by me, to go greatest to least)
PortableApps Suite 54% (2,614 votes)
LiberKey 25% (1,233 votes)
Portable Linux 13% (614 votes)
Geek.Menu 4% (189 votes)
Other: 2% (101 votes)
Lupo PenSuite 2% (98 votes)
Total Votes: 4,849
PA.c has this one in the bag...
With great power comes great responsibility.
Learn something new every day, and the rest will take care of itself.
Live is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the trip!
u have to remember the
u have to remember the software is opensource to begin with but u are correct they have no right to strip the licenses.
That's Mr. Awesome To You.
Same Thing
Taking open source software, stripping the license/readme/source is the same as taking a paid piece of software and redistributing it. Both are copyright violations. The only thing that allows you to redistribute it is the license. Unless you abide by the license, you have no right to redistribute it.
Of course, he also bundles software like Firefox, Opera, uTorrent, Google Chome and others without permission from the trademark/copyright-holders and in violation of their respective licenses.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Although...
...the website in question has a pretty good list of portable freeware/open source programs, regardless of legality. I'm assuming that most of the freeware is already portable, in some way. I feel no shame in looking at their list, then going to the original source to download it, rather than use their own portable menu to run it and update it. It's relatively simple to add it to the PA.c launcher, as well. No big deal.
Although, a list like that would be really useful around here as well. Not for downloading, of course, just to refer other programs. And so would an updater in the launcher. And categories. Andandandandandandand.... ^^ I'll stop being annoying now.
Oh and I voted for you. You're going to win in any case. Congratulations!
-Whistle
PortableFreeware.com
That's what portablefreeware.com is for. The guys there (as well as the forum helpers) keep on top of hundreds upon hundreds of apps. Subscribing to an RSS feed of the update forum is a necessity for anybody who makes use of portable apps.
"Save us, Porta-Jesus!"
(because "Porta-John" was already taken)
PortableApps.com Mopping the Floor with the Competition
Congrats! You're going to win by a landslide. I've been quiet on the PA forums for some time (since moving to a Mac at home), but I'm still a huge fan and use your apps almost exclusively on my Windows machine at work. Keep up the great work!
When does voting end?
When does voting end? Any specific time limit?
btw, PA.c is still killing the competition, but Liberkey is closer than I'd like it to be...
PortableApps Suite 47% (2,930 votes)
LiberKey 36% (2,239 votes)
Portable Linux 10% (636 votes)
Geek.Menu 3% (197 votes)
Other: 2% (108 votes)
Lupo PenSuite 2% (105 votes)
Total Votes: 6,215
With great power comes great responsibility.
Learn something new every day, and the rest will take care of itself.
Live is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the trip!
Multiple Votes
I just got a tip that someone in the LiberKey forums found a way to vote multiple times and has been doing so. Kinda fits with the way they do things.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Not surprised
You know, foul play crossed my mind... after seeing LiberKey pirate app after app, then watching them come back from a 1,000 vote deficit, I'm not really surprised. Going to be royally ticked off if Liberkey wins though... (appeal to LifeHacker, maybe? They're as fair as can be...)
With great power comes great responsibility.
Learn something new every day, and the rest will take care of itself.
Live is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the trip!
Multiple voting
I translated their topic about the Lifehacker poll. All I could find is one person said they were going to vote at work as well. To be fair, and to contrast, another member said that regardless of who wins, he's thankful for all who work on portable applications.
Any of us can vote on all the different computers we use. There's one more computer in this office I could vote for, and I could vote from home as well, but something tells me y'all wouldn't approve. I caught some hell here for doing exactly that in the SourceForge contest (voting twice).
Maybe if LiberKey wins, they'll wind up with more attention than they bargained for. It never made sense to me why warez monkeys like that other site and clear license violators like LiberKey were so insistent on pushing their "goods" on people. If they're gonna play dirty, wouldn't it be smarter for them to lay low?
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Please
Hello John,
I really like PortableApps and use it everyday because of it's OpenSource & Legal. But, I've also taken a look to Liberkey and it is "technically" interessant, with many advanced features.
Concerning "Multiple votes" you mentionned, please don't make confusion between one guy on the forum and Liberkey point of view. Here is what moderator says :
"L'important c'est le respect et le fairplay. S'il vous plait ne votez qu'une seule fois pour la (ou les) solution portable de votre choix."
Meaning : "What's important is to be fair and respectfully. Please do not use multiple votes for your (or yours) choice(s)."
As think it's important to stay fair and always say the truth.
Regards
Guillaume
Thank you all for your great work
Depends
It depends what you mean by advanced. The menu is just ASuite (which you can use your own and find in Lupo Pensuite, WinPenPack and a number of other bundled packages). The file associations were just Cafe/eXpresso (also open source and developed by folks here and at PortableFreeware) though now it looks like a new one, but nothing different than PortableFileAssociator. The only unique thing is the updater. Ours has been in testing for quite a while (longer than it should, honestly) but will finally launch this week.
The big difference is that we did all of it without violating copyright/trademarks/GPL, bundling software without permission and claiming we had it, ripping other people off or lying about it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Agree
No offense :
- ASuite : OK, it's 'only' ASuite but it brings categories
- PortableFileAssociator : I just started using it... I can't tell
- Updater : I'll get yours as soon as it's out but they have implemented many features so it will require some time to get the same advanced updater
- packaging : there is nothing to do at all : install and it works.
So, I think their solution is "technically" better but I completelly agree with you : legal is your best "pro". That's why I use PortableApps for "data".
Edit : Concerning the legal argument, they claim to prepare an official article explaining how their bundles are legal but nothing came out for a few month now so by now... too bad for them
Thank you all for your great work
Doesn't matter
Doesn't matter.
Six hours ago vs. now.
PortableApps Suite 47% (2,930 votes) ... 50% (3,347 votes)
LiberKey 36% (2,239 votes) ... 34% (2,260 votes)
Portable Linux 10% (636 votes) ... 10% (653 votes)
Geek.Menu 3% (197 votes) ... 3% (210 votes)
Other: 2% (108 votes) ... 2% (110 votes)
Lupo PenSuite 2% (105 votes) ... 2% (112 votes)
In six hours, Lupo gained 7 votes, the others gained 2 votes, Geek.Menu got 13, Portable Linux got 17. LiberKey got 21... not bad... but PA got 413, gained three percentage points, at the loss of 2% to LiberKey. No other percentiles changed.
On top of all that, the PortableApps Suite has TWO more votes than all the others COMBINED. Sorry for the caps, but that is something worth shouting about.
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French ?
I think most of Liberkey users are french. So they were sleeping for a few hours
Thank you all for your great work
0430 EST = 0930 GMT?
That post was made at 0430 EST, which is 0930 GMT, I think -- is France GMT or GMT+1? Still, more Americans would have been asleep per capita than French.
A la prochaine. (Copypasta from common phrases guide, wish I had the tongue to actually speak it.)
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Copypasta from common phrases
Sounds more like Italian to me
Nope
No, French.
In Italian, it's a presto.
Both mean "see you later" according to the guide (both languages linked). It seemed the most appropriate from the list.
>:| 4 8 15 16 23 42EXECUTE
Right
You're right, French people is waking up and American were sleeping too. My mistake
A la prochaine ! (you're guide is OK
)
Thank you all for your great work
Copy pasta?
Never mind...
Too bad
At the end, it seams that some Liberkey users did not follow moderator's advise and used multiple votes (LiberKey : 47% / PortableApps 41%, which is far to high to be true)
Thank you all for your great work
Kinda Funny
In under 2 hours, they got 2,000 votes, so it was obviously manipulated (it's trivial with PollDaddy polls... just disable cookies and you can vote as many times as you want). LiberKey's own users are admitting as much in their forums. And at least one user is disappointed that they'll only be remembered for cheating. Just as a gauge of scope, LiberKey only has about 1-2% of the userbase of PortableApps.com if that helps show the obviousness of the manipulation.
Considering the way LiberKey does business (stealing software, ignoring licenses and lying to cover it up), it's really pretty funny.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Totally agree
I totally agree on this : they obviously cheated.
Thank you all for your great work
Script
I'd wager they used this script, actually:
http://grimhq.com/vote.php?id=10&ammount=10&aid=10
Automatically vote 10s, 100s or 1000s of times. Pretty lame.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Rectification
It seams that Liberkey main developper has alerted lifehacker about these false votes and the result will be updated accordingly.
I don't know if it's true but it would be a good news
Thank you all for your great work
Sickening & disgusting
I can't believe they'd stoop this low... come on, this is supposed to be a fair competition.
I probably could have voted multiple times, but I didn't even try; it's not ethical, and it's not in agreement with PortableApps.com whole philosophy. On the other hand, I'm not really surprised to see LiberKey cheating; they cheat & steal (all we're missing now is lies), what next?
PortableApps.com is the clear real winner here, no matter what the stats say. (IMHO, Liberkey should be banned from the LifeHacker poll; if LifeHacker wants to feature their suite, fine, but take those cheating dogs out of the polls!!)
EDIT: if the LiberKey moderator actually meant what he said about fairness, my sympathies to him. All LiberKey will be remembered for is cheating, and they're going to get a lot of negative press over this...
My very deep sympathies & congratulations to John, sympathies because he (currently) can't be recognized as the winner he is; my congratulations because PortableApps.com is clearly the true winner here, no matter what the poll says. Keep up the good work, John, and may LifeHacker dump those extra LK votes!
With great power comes great responsibility.
Learn something new every day, and the rest will take care of itself.
Live is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the trip!
Well, it might just be a few
Well, it might just be a few renegade users - I found their forum thread about this, and read the entire thing. The moderators & most of the users were saying "be fair, 1 vote per person", and a few seemed dismayed by the cheating (keep in mind I'm using Google Translate, this may not be exact):
Note: for those who want to see the whole thread, here's the original thread & the Google translation of it... (note that it starts on P. 5, that's where the relevant stuff is)
Original thread:
http://www.liberkey.com/forum/annonces/19609-vote-for-liberkey-in-the-li...
Google translation:
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&u=http://www.li...
With great power comes great responsibility.
Learn something new every day, and the rest will take care of itself.
Live is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the trip!
Vote I did and also encorage to all . Thanks for all
With pleasure I vote
I want to thank to all of you who have been giving us such a nice tool.
Best for all
Joao
Portable Apps - Winner
What might be the figure after the survey but portable apps is the real winner.
Registered my Vote....
yup
PortableApps is the real winner. Voted.
I wonder if...
in PollDaddy polls (or any others, for that matter) multiple votes can be removed by the admin, to negate the effects of cheating and reflect the actual voting returns. Though I suppose if that were possible, it would have been done by now.
I voted for PortableApps and am encouraging my friends to do so, too.
Good luck, PortableApps team! You have integrity and therefore, the deep respect of thousands upon thousands of loyal users.
Cheers!
---Fox
We won...
Wooo...
Now what? Wait for a big surge of people running up to us to get our autographs?
Insert original signature here with Greasemonkey Script.
Technically, we didn't
Technically, we didn't win...
Note the use of the word "technically", as LiberKey cheated... if LifeHacker gets rid of the cheating votes, then we'll officially win.
With great power comes great responsibility.
Learn something new every day, and the rest will take care of itself.
Live is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the trip!
Read the Followup...
They adjusted the winners.
Insert original signature here with Greasemonkey Script.
Link please?
Do you have the link for the followup? Can't seem to find it on LifeHacker, and the poll hasn't been updated...
With great power comes great responsibility.
Learn something new every day, and the rest will take care of itself.
Live is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the trip!
LifeHacker FollowUp
There was a link on the home page of LifeHacker. You can find the follow up here.
Thanks for the link - YAY!!! :D
Thanks for the link!
*Reads follow-up*
YAY!!!
Congratulations, John!
It's really cool that you got the win - keep up the great work, and may PA.c stay #1 for a long, long time!!
With great power comes great responsibility.
Learn something new every day, and the rest will take care of itself.
Live is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the trip!
Email
That just ticked me off. I sent an email to the provided contact address (jason [at] lifehacker [dot] com) saying the following:
...OK, I see the correction here, but the corrupted poll is still shown, hence the email I sent. If they'd linked the results from there (or done so more cleanly) I'd hurry back to Gmail to write a follow-up, but since that wasn't done, I'll just see if I get a reply, and reply in kind.
I've disagreed with y'all on a few things from time to time, but this is something y'all really deserve, especially when all they could put you up against was forks of your own work and copyright/license violations, and a portable Linux distro which really doesn't fit. As always, much respect to PortableApps.com and its devs, and all the work you guys do so that we can use our favorite programs everywhere we go, legally.
Also, respect must go to the LiberKey admin for turning in his own people, at the cost of the contest. It would have gone this way if he didn't (the evidence shouldn't be hard to collect) but he was on top of the game and did the right thing. So, to him or them, Merci.
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One Legal Fork
To be clear, Geek.Menu is a legal fork of the PortableApps.com Menu with some features added. It's missing some functionality of the 2.0 betas. We're incorporating bits into PA.c Menu from it and will hopefully achieve parity soon.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Yeah, I meant...
I see where I said "and" and meant "and/or", as in forks of the PA.c menu and/or menus with copyright/other legal issues.
Aren't all the forks legal, though? That one guy has a version of the menu, but I think all he did was change the color to gold and replace the branding. I haven't tried his menu, but it's an even bet that nothing's added. Then again, he did add update checking to PAF, so it might have a couple hidden tricks, but I like yellow (gold) less than I like red (no offense) design-wise, so I'm not about to go try his. R34's got to be legal, I've never heard of anything illegal they've done.
I've been using the official, 2.0 beta 3 for so long on my own flash drive, I forgot all the stuff in R34. I've got to use that on my external hard drive at home, I just have too many apps to not have categories (including 2 copies of Firefox, and 2 of Pidgin, one of each for me, and one of each for my wife). Removed it, updated the menu to 1.5.2, updated it to the latest R34, got a bunch of themes, it's great.
While I do long for the day when the official menu has all the features of the R34 menu, as I imagine a future where a lot more people use the PortableApps.com platform, e.g. to run apps from OS install to OS install, or to lessen the load on their registry, or various other benefits, leading to more apps and thus the need for the menu to support more features -- but I can see the benefit in simplicity as well.
>:| 4 8 15 16 23 42EXECUTE
We won! Like we could
We won! Like we could lose...we're just that awesome!
Lead, Follow, or get out of the way.
Have no worries
I have been a PA loyalist for many years and advise it's use at any time the opportunity presents itself...I think many feel this way.
I know that the Rainmeter community passes word of PA freely.
I fear this is not a dead issue..as many would compete with PA