Found this through lifehacker, gave it a shot, and look, it's out Firefox (and looks like several others but I haven't checked them yet, and doubt that they're be illegal)
http://www.technibble.com/computer-repair-utility-kit/
Have fun, get the copyright police on them!
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When someone creates a package, which - possibly - contains Portable Firefox, it will be - possibly - considered as illegal? WTF?
"Have fun, get the copyright police on them!"
Oh man. I hope you're just joking. Please enlight us, mere humans, define what can be considered legal anyways.
If a software is GPL (like this) you:
- can redistribute it (i.e: give exact copies to others) as long as you say who was the author;
- can modify it (i.e: create a new app from one), as long as you say who was the author of the app that you modified;
- must say who was the original author (i.e: you can't modify/redistribute it if you don't say who made it or lie about that);
- must keep any changes or any app that uses it in the same license (if an app is GPL and you create a new app out of it, it must also be GPL).
This software's logo and brand (PortableApps.com and Mozilla Firefox) are trademarked. So you:
- can't keep the same logo and brand if you modify it (unless with explicit permission from the owners).
The problem here is that htey repackaged (similar to modify) and kept the original name (and in a quick glance, I don't know if they are saying who made it).
I hope I made you understand this.
Thanks, you beat me to it
basically Firefox doesn't let use the firefox name
Lead, Follow, or get out of the way.
"The Computer Repair Utility Kit is no longer being distributed. However, we may be re-releasing it soon after some changes."
You may have succeeded in getting this evil criminal software removed from the internets .
Congratulations, what a marvellous victory, You Sir, are clearly a great lawyer ..
I didn't contact them about it. Mozilla may have. Or CCleaner (they don't allow repackaging). Or one of the other freeware apps that they didn't get permission from. Or they may have run outta bandwidth.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I made news on lifehacker so hundreds of people would have seen it, chances are some from mozilla, or one of the other illegal apps, either way, it's done and overwith.
Lead, Follow, or get out of the way.
Just about everything except half a dozen apps in the pacakge weren't to be redistributed. Almost all weren't portable. There were some batch files though.
As far as bandwidth is concerned, the had it on rapidshare. My guess is some one called them on it.
Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world
I think that distributing an "aggregate" including an unmodified open source application (including source, credit, and everything else required by the GPL) is okay (see section 5).
If the trademark is the issue (and not the GPL), it should not be one when dealing with unmodified distributions.
Unmodified means you can only distribute the binary installer as defined by Mozilla and others. If you put it in your own installer, you either need permission or to stop using the trademarks.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Observation from the sidelines...
Sometimes it seems that Open Source projects are showing similar behavior as commercial parties. Ok, redistributing freeware is a no-go. But the fight about re-packaged open source and naming. Agreed that names are protected to differenciate between legit releases and repackaged ones.
But what if I made a collection of Portable Open source tools that on first run 'installed' the apps, can one say they were repackaged upon examining the 'distribution'?
Is embedding several installers into a self extracting archive which batch installs several apps also considered 'repackaging' or mere 'archiving which is okay I think.
Anyway I think that Open Source is the way to go and hopefully producers will show respect to other projects.
Cheers
If someone distributes an exact copy of an original Firefox Portable release, do they need to rename it?
EDIT: The rationale being that FFP is different from an original Firefox installer.
John got authorization to keep Mozilla's Trademark on his builds of FFP, so if someone redistributes the exact FFP installer without any modification whatsoever, you only need to say who originally made that FFP (John in this case) and fulfill few other details.