It wasn't intended to read that way, just as a warning to new users who may not know about PFC's listing guidelines. And when it was pointed out to me that it could be misinterpreted, I added: "It should be noted that you can check a Portable Freeware Collection listing to see if an app is considered 'stealth' and automatically adjust paths so things don't break as you move PCs. If an app fits both those criteria, then the app should be fully portable." Sadly, I could not add that to the original comment due to lifehacker's post edit time limitations.webfork wrote:Its called framing. People use it all the time in politics. So here in the States its "climate change" rather than "global warming" on the right or "green initiatives" rather than "industry subsidies" on the left. Anyone reading behind the lines of your words hears you calling us "trash" the way Baas rightly pointed out.
Except that we make it completely clear what you can donate to and where that money goes. We even spell it out that you can donate to "PortableApps.com's development and hosting" or "Support the GIMP project directly" on the GIMP Portable homepage, for example. We do that for every app we've been able to find donation info for (except where the publishers have requested not to have their donation links appear). We're even adding in-platform donation links to the app publishers themselves from their apps in the menu in the next update to give users an additional prompt to donate to the projects directly. We make it as clear as possible who you can donate to and why. And we're not making money off these donations, they don't even cover the site's monthly hosting and bandwidth costs.webfork wrote:Your choice of words matters and if you want to pretend like it doesn't, I guess PortableApps is something you should avoid because some people might get confused that they're donating to the program in question, which took lots of work or donating to PortableApps, which is an easy wrapper program that is just adapted over and over to different needs. Its not a big deal if you just make sure you go to the site in question.
I'm not saying anything factually inaccurate. But anyone reading between the lines would hear "wow, what an exploitative project."
You have to admit that PFC isn't clear to new users about what their definition of portable is. And that the PFC definition differs from what many (possibly most) users think of as portable. PFC considers apps that leave things behind and have things break as you move PCs as portable and lists them in the database. Apps that do this are even preferred over so-called 'wrapper' apps that are fully portable and don't leave extra bits around. I'm not sure why it isn't made clearer, maybe folks here expect new visitors to be into the same 'extract and configure it yourself' niche that they are. But, either way, it's not clear. And, I'd wager, it isn't what most people would expect. I was just trying to point that out.
I, admittedly, didn't make all that entirely clear with my first lifehacker post, which was just a quick few lines in the last paragraph of that post. I didn't spell it out as clearly as I did here (when a PFC user was confused why his app he downloaded here wasn't portable) that even though this is PFC policy, there are things in the records to look for so you can determine if a given app is fully portable. That's why I then replied with a 2nd paragraph. If I could have edited my post on lifehacker at the time to make it more clear, I would have. And, as I said before, I am genuinely sorry if I wound up confusing anyone with it.
(EDIT: I just recalled 