The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

One sad part of this is that many of the users never even know they are paying for something they could get for free or using a product that has been copycatted (sp?). I often try different software just to check them out "play" and see what features are present, preferably open source and/or portable programs. I've often seen programs that looked similar and occasionally looked way too close to be anything but a copycat and many times wasn't sure who was the original. If additional features are added or bugs fixed I wouldn't mind as much but to just "steal" someone else's work verbatim and strip away/change the original developer's name and licensing information really bothers me. At least occasionally comments are/were posted or some of the sites I've visited over the years such as Giveawayoftheday, UBCD, UBCD4Win, Here, etc. about this and similar issues.

It would be nice to have a source to check for this information and maybe a note on apps/programs in the TPFC Database. Perhaps a post/thread at the top of one of the forum sections.

Sorry if that appears a bit scatterbrained, I'm a bit scatterbrained...

Another knock-off, this one actually got some attention somehow: a barely modified version of LibreOffice with a new name and a price tag: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/trio- ... verviewtab

The program does not mention LibreOffice once in the description, nor provide screencaps. Softpedia ran a review of it and noted that it's basically just LibreOffice and the supposed premium features weren't a reason to buy it: https://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-to ... ible.shtml

Just a quick pointer to Midas' post about another Store problem -- an unauthorized qBittorrent: viewtopic.php?p=96569#p96569

Very unfortunately, the developer of the very promising Captura program has decided to drop the project and anything development-related due to issues with the Microsoft Store. This was an exciting toolset that was enabling a lot of great open screen recording functions. I wonder how many others devs are getting alienated from the Windows platform because of this same issue.

Yeah, I noticed this issue recently. It is messed up. They should fix this asap.