A while back I saw sites on eBay "selling" USB drives with your software pre-installed. In fact, I found your site because I plugged the words on those pages into Google and your pages came up near the top.
It has been a while since I had even looked on eBay for your products since I figure it was a waste of money and time after I found your site. However, it has been nagging me many months now regarding HOW those people could be selling those USB drives with your software on it. On their site I don't recall any links to Portableapps.com, that is why I used Google.
If I recall, they were selling the 512 Meg USB drives for something like $25 or $29.00. They DID say the software was included FREE, but after seeing 512 Meg drives at Tiger Direct for $10.00, it seems less free than FREE.
Anyway, I'm just wondering if those sites were illegal scams. Isn't distribution of your software without permission, with your trademarked logos, without reference to your site illegal? A scam? Even if they didn't exactly use your name on the sites I saw, your logos were there. Am I right that they were scaming visitors illegally? I love PortableApps, and if this illegal, is there some place to report it?
Sorry if this seems like a strange question, but it is one of those things that just have been gnawing in the back of my brain and I figured I'd just ask.
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Most sites don't even make a reference to PortableApps.com
I would love (note: LOVE) to see John crack down on these fools.
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Ryan McCue
Santa: Ho Ho Ho!
Kim: Yes, thank you Santa, I am.
(Kath and Kim)
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
Distributing the launchers is fine. Using John's logos and things is not.
As far the programs, well, John had trouble with Mozilla.
So yes, this is illegal. You should report it to eBay. You've reported it to John here.
Vintage!
as you are not distrubuting any TM'd logos or anything else, (only if you get John's permission) , and you must have a reference to this site ( giving credit is the golden rule), the concept of open source is that you can sell thing that are free and open source but you can't prevent somdone else from selling it. Oh and you have to distrubute the source code..
My company is planning on selling 2gb USB drives to our customers with PortableApps.com installed but also Lotus Notes on a stick pre-configured for our users. We dont charge for portableapps and our site links to portable apps ( www.choir.it its called the choir.stick). I was made to change the image to green im sorry, the boss's wanted it more corporate for the web site although what we issue is just the normal portable apps. (we would love to speak to the PA guys about a custom look one, email sent).
What we charge for is our custom branded USB drive (2gb) and our time in setting up the clients Lotus Notes all ready to go as this also could involve an admin change on the clients notes setup. The cost also covers our own research in getting Notes into the launcher as well as future support.
As its a legitimate business i work for we dont want to infringe on any copyrights or issues PA may have with out venture. So if anyone has any comments or concerns please let me know. Seriously, I need to make sure were not doing anything wrong by adding portable apps to the stick.
If I remember a discussion I had with John, you can't use the Mozilla logos with unofficial builds and John had a few issues with that (John, remove if you want).
So, anything 'cept FFP and TBP should be fine, but John will let you know.
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Ryan McCue
Santa: Ho Ho Ho!
Kim: Yes, thank you Santa, I am.
(Kath and Kim)
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
How do you mean? Regarding builds were simply using portable apps standard with Lotus Notes installed and a shortcut added to the PortableApps menu. So far now modificatio of code or build.
Should be OK then, however you can't even modify the bookmarks, nothing at all.
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Ryan McCue
Santa: Ho Ho Ho!
Kim: Yes, thank you Santa, I am.
(Kath and Kim)
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
You forgot about Mozilla Sunbird...
We remove that along with thunderbird, as our customers use lotus notes and it comes on the stick there is no need for these apps, also one less thing to support when they start fiddling and breaking it.
I knew you wouldn't want that cause you have Lotus Notes.
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Ryan McCue
Santa: Ho Ho Ho!
Kim: Yes, thank you Santa, I am.
(Kath and Kim)
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
Okay, the 1st response was pretty clear. It was illegal. But it seems as the discussion progressed, some form of "legal use" without permission from PortableApps seems to be possible?
Does that mean that some of the companies selling USB drives WITH a "free version" of PortableApps pre-installed, even without "specific permission" for that company are LEGAL?
I don't understand exactly, after reading the discussion, why www.choir.it is okay? I guess I understand that they give credit where credit is due, but does that mean that credit is all that is required for any USB manufacturer (or value added re-manufacture?) to keep legal?
I don't know much about this kind of licensing since I'm in radio and without one of the licensing bodies that radio pays fees to, pretty much ALL borrowing is illegal. Still, I gather from the progress of the www.choir.it discussion that there ARE instances where those that are selling USB drives with PortableApps pre-installed are NOT breaking the rules, even without permission from PortableApps (though Mozilla products may be an issue). Is that correct?
Todd P
Under the terms of the GPL, redistribution is allowed, as long as the source and a copy of the license is made available. John's launchers are licensed under the GPL, and so are most of the apps he has made portable. You would have no problem redistributing OpenOffice.org Portable for example, because OOo is licensed under the LGPL, which allows the same freedom plus the permission to include parts in a proprietary application. The GPL is included with all launchers (it's required by law), and the LGPL is included with OOo (I think). Finding a copy of it shouldn't be hard anyway.
The logos and other trademarked things fall under a different category. John doesn't want his logos and stuff used like that.
As has been said, John will let you know if he will allow you to do this and under what terms, if any.
GPL:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt
LGPL:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.txt
Vintage!
Thanks for that, I will add the links to the licenses to the promo page just to make sure. I will also check with John/Portableapps to make sure what were doing is allowed and fine and we dont infindge on any copyrights.
WE will be re-distributing PA in its original form, did consider modifying the FF bookmarks but now will not.
John will let you know
Probably when he gets back from holidays.
*mumbles under breath*
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Ryan McCue
Santa: Ho Ho Ho!
Kim: Yes, thank you Santa, I am.
(Kath and Kim)
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."