Making an application portable: Hooking?

The plan was not to have the code itself be open source but a application that bundles the portable apps. The nitty gritty that can be misused can be put elsewhere besides somewhere where people can see it.

Using Closed Source Software to make Open Source Software where people can't see how to do it themselves? Has a strange taste to it

Tim

Don't want to be rude but I am going to cut this short soon, so if I don't answer your next reply I'm sure someone else will pick this up.

What kind of limitations?

See:
https://portableapps.com/support/firefox_portable#modifications
for some of the modifications that have been made with Mozilla's permission.

Currently we have a problem with the AutoUpdate Check for updates. We are not allowed to turn it off.

how hard would that be just to transfer the permissions to a different type of Portability
That question is beyond me.

Lastly, we can just not apply this technique to FF at all.
Again, that question is beyond me.

A few clarifications might be in order:

• Open Source licenses make it hard to (legally) distribute applications and libraries if you bundle them with closed source code or (in some cases) modify the original. That's not the same thing as saying you can't do it, just that it's not legal to distribute them in certain forms, or with closed source modifications.
• Nobody is saying that you can't distribute a closed source application that hooks the API's, just that licensing terms won't let you bundle and distribute it with most open source applications.
• I don't think there is anything that prevents you from distributing a closed source program that provides a portable environment for other programs, as long as you don't try to bundle things in ways that violate those other programs' distribution licenses.
• There are some copy prevention schemes whose licensing do not allow the end user to change the environment much. Otherwise, end users are pretty much able to create any environment they want to run programs.
• Open Source is not the same as "freeware". In particular, while you can do lots of things with freeware, you can't distribute it using the SourceForge servers. That's not saying freeware is bad, just that SourceForge wants to use its servers for other things.
• It might be easier and more elegant to take Open Source programs and modify them to "be portable" -- that is, store settings and data in a location and format of the user's choice, as an option. In the case of Mozilla products, if the Mozilla folks don't adopt the design changes, you can still make the changes and distribute the result, you just can't use their registered names and graphics.
• The real benefit of "hooking" would be in closed source programs where the maintainers do not want to make their programs "portable". Of course, it is even less likely that you would legally be able to distribute a "bundle" of a hooking environment with a closed source program.
• A lot of people might hope for a hooking/portability environment that allows them to overcome restrictive licensing provisions, such as provisions that tie a software license to a particular machine. It might be difficult to distribute such a portable environment if that is its main purpose. The PortableApps.com site might prefer to avoid associating itself with such software, especially if that is its primary purpose, or even if it is an un-stated benefit.

Mostly, it is a matter of details (and the devil that is in them). I think there are legal ways of creating a portable environment that uses hooking. I would be delighted to see it happen. There are several details that might make it difficult to happen on this site, but that is not to say that it is a bad idea, or that this is a bad site.