I was wondering if it would be feasible to also have launchers on the development test page. I'm thinking this would be a lot more work for Zach, but it would be nice to have. I'm just wondering what everyone thinks.
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You mean like LOGAN's apps, where he just has the launchers instead of full packages? I was thinking about doing this, creating a new table for launcher-only setups, but things are gettin busier at work and at home.
The developer formerly known as ZGitRDun8705
Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. I know people release launchers for closed source programs. I just thought it would be a good idea to put them all in one place. I know it would be a lot of work for you, so I understand if it's not included on the page. Plus, you can always use the search function at the top of the page. Remember, search first.
Ryan McCue did a launcher for uTorrent, (which is some sort of freeware proprietary app since BitTorrent bought it) and posted it, although it is really outdated and does not meet current paf specs. That is the only single launcher I know of that got on the dev test page. There are probably a few more.
While launchers are handy, they require additional work to be usable by a user so they don't really meet the whole 'convenient and easy' aspect of portable apps. We won't be featuring any in the application list, so they don't belong on the Development Test page at the moment.
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Probably the best choice for now. Even with an installer that would download the (in this case open source) main application might be to confusing. But alas, I cant be bothered to compile 500MB to 700MB setups, let alone host them. So I decided to release them as launchers only.
What about another section in development for launchers? Plus, launchers can stop many annoying questions. If people realized there was a launcher for their app, like Project 64 or Halo, they'd stop asking for it to be portable.
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I think portableapps.com will be best served by sticking to
Free Open Source Software.
Of course people are still free to make launchers
for software they have a legal right to use, I just don't think it's wise
for portableapps.com to get to involved in it .