I can only notice that freeware is the mainstay of portable apps scene. I have tried to make a couple apps with my personally owned software using my keys, but they never turn out well when I try to use them on my work PC.
Is this a valid issue to bring up or is the developement of non freeware a taboo issue? Thanks for any info.
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Dunno what taboo means, but all the apps here have to be open source in order to be modified, and if they are open source, they are free too. When you say freeware, that may mean the app it not open source and therefore cannot be modified, so it can't be made portable, but I think some page is coming for freeware apps son too on this site, but closed source (non-free) apps will never be coming, because I don't see how they could if they're not free.
Unless permission was gotten to make a commercial app portable, and then sold, but who wants that?
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I am new as well so I am trying to learn here. Why would hte commercial apps guys not find the idea of portable apps interesting? If they could get paid it seems that it would make sense.
Well, for one, at this site, like I said, all the Apps are open-source because they have to be in order to be modified, but open-source and community maintained and developed software is just as, and is some cases better than paid software. So why pay? Sure, sometimes, there's software that if QUITE good, but it's commercial and paid, so you'll buy it, but the price for software is IMMENSE, and in my opinion, there's two basic parts to it.
1.It's free, and free to modify.
2.It's community developed, so you can put in your say for what you want, and contribute.
As for the commercial guy wanting it portalble, I'm sure someone else can answer that in a lil more detail for you.
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Firefox and IE is one example. Because Firefox is open source it can be modified to fix bugs by the community and can be easily modded.
all the Apps are open-source because they have to be in order to be modified
I'm terribly sorry to contradict you, specially being myself also a newbie here, but I believe that isn't actually the case.
PuTTY, for instance, was "portabilized" without touching it's sources, by wrapping it in a loader that puts the entries from a .reg file into the registry, runs the good old normal untouched PuTTY, and then exports the branch of the registry back into the .reg file.
And I'm not sure, but I think the Mozilla license forbids it's apps being modified and re-distributed without changing the logo and all the rest of the "branding", so probably what has been done is similar to PuTTY's case.
I believe indeed that's the case with most portable apps.
Also, at least theoretically, it should be possible to write a program that fires up a standard program and watches it so if the loaded proggy tries to read or write from the registry or anywhere else outside of the device where it is, the request will be "detoured" by the loader to some file in the device. It would be sort of a hijacker. I've seen (illegal) programs that do this when a propietary, unlicensed program tries to read a special key on the parallel port. (I saw it years ago, now they use USB keys). I don't approve of this kind of cracking, but the same technology and skill set could be used instead of to crack apps, to "portabilize" them.
Also, Skype is a closed-source app, but take a look at this thread. Those switches on the command line mean only one thing: Skype themselves have provided a mechanism for their program to work portably, even though they're not open-source at all.
All that said, it still remains true that if you can peep into the code, it is much easier to know what scaffolding needs to be put around it to make it portable. And also that many open-source apps are just as good as any commercial software (others suck, there's no denying) and many are unsurpassed but I won't give examples because I don't want to start a religious war.
And it is also true that even in the case of Skype: they did it themselves rather than opening the code. This allows them to keep control of their app and of their network. (And of the very well earned profits they are making out of them, of course).
And then you have a lot of license issues about redistribution. Take (again) for instance Skype. I wrote a loader, but can't distribute even that simple loader if I put their icon on it, or I would be infringing their copyright. Let alone the whole application in a different installer. Well, actually I'm not so sure about just the icon... we could always argue that since the loader fires up their app it is only a way of "quoting" them... but I don't know. I'm not a lawyer and I don't want to have to hire one,
so I asked them, let's see what they answer...
But well, to summarize: it is possible to make a commercial app portable, but it is harder, and once you've managed: you can't just redistribute it, and users can't just download it, because of copyright and license issues.
was correct, all the progs here have loaders that load the code, and yes you can create commerical loaders as well, I have been for awhile.
AS what he meant by the open source comment was, when a project is open source it gives full rights to change the code AND the do things like add wrappers. and distribute them together. In commerical software, wrappers can be written, but they cannot be distributed together with the program. That is the difference.
If you glance around the threads in the beta forum, I once wrote a wrapper/loader for photoshop 7, I distrubuted that code under the GPL, so it was ok, but I could not distribute the program and the compiled launcher with it, that was not ok.
(I only stopped due to trademark issues with the name.) But it goes the same for all close source apps, payware/freeware/trialware.
You just need to find out what it does, and build around it, but the licenses/trademarks/copyrights, need to be pay very close attention to, and permission can help.
Open source makes it much easier, and in my mind much cheaper and free-er
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Deuce {The Core}{Dev Blog}
Portable Software: Just the beginning.
Deuce
Portable Software: Just the beginning.
John started this site in order to promote OpenSource Apps and to create a place to centralise the knowledge of how to make Apps portable.
All Apps released here are the unmodified base application and a launcher who takes care of backing up local settings, deleting/restoring registry keys and setting data and so on. One exception is Sudoku where John modified the source (removing sound ...)in order to make it smaller.
The problem with commercial apps is that very often the license doesnt allow you to redistribute the App other than distributing the complete instaler. So you are not lowed to repackage it as a portable app and redistribute it. You can only make it portable and use it yourself.
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that a launcher could be created and distributed.
Of course than everyone who wants to use a commercila app in a portable manner has to make sure himself whether the license is fulfilled or not (or he wants to fulfill it or not).
This is independent from the launcher itself.
Of courese repackaging of the application should not be done. (Except maybe with some shareware versions, but permission has then to be retrieved from the developer).
My suggestion: Create a launcher and add a description how or where to copy the already installed application to make it portable.
Or simply provide the source for the launcher. (But really I don't see any difference providing the source or the finished launcher)
This is simply my opinion.
The difference between providing the source or the launcher would be the icon.
If providing the launcher you would have to use a generic icon so you didn't violate copyright. Providing the source, users could extract the apps icon from the app and compile it into the launcher.
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agreed. The source should always be provided IMHO...