I want to release community "collections" (I have Dev's okays) of portable tools

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aazard
Posts: 51
Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2020 8:23 pm

I want to release community "collections" (I have Dev's okays) of portable tools

#1 Post by aazard »

Hi, I'm Jeff, aka aazard!

I play with compression, packaging and testing apps (I can code, but at a "hello world" or "i edited your code in 3 lines" type skill level).

But I've been a system admin/component tech for 20+ years (i'm 40), and I've played with "foss" stuff "forever"...so I know "how to judge" tools well: to each other comparatively, imho

Anyhow, I tend to rant, ALOT, so I will get right to it.

I have a collection of portable/UPX packed apps (100% tested/dev ok'ed) that fit on a 128mb flash drive (its 118mb "on disk"), it includes the "Arcade Classic Arcade Pack" & a FOSS swplayer (for dev'ing/testing) plus 18 of the "best byte4byte" FOSS games to play in downtime or work-on/improve (or test included tools on).

The pack here: https://github.com/aazard/HumanStuff_Ea ... te_Pak.exe
*link does not reflect current "final", awaiting a dev ok, give it...a week?

is still in LAST beta release, I have full release waiting on a single dev reply (for Aorta DDS/Normal maps tool, here https://sourceforge.net/projects/aorta/), it says its ok, but I still want to talk to dev for safety

The pack is mostly for creatives/producers of ANY typr, desktop publishing, to software authoring (seriously its my "current" best thing ever).

Full office (ebub, pdf, docx, xlsx, spell check, email, calander ... MORE) included inside 12mb

Capture, Record, STREAM

Create, Edit, PUBLISH

I need a full write up or I'll rant..I'll stop

HOW DO I REQUEST PERMISSION TO RELEASE A PACK, of about 100 apps, as a single "compilation/collection" as an 80mb "7zip" file
*all eula, and other "legal" text combined in to a master html, not present but linked too in pack (as its pretty big), to overcome "redundant docs", ie many GPL.txt etc (all dev's ok'ed but 1 I'm waiting on, not to step on toes)

*tested 100% functional (compaired to "installed versions") on ReactOS also, tested on Windows as far back as Windows Fundamentals For Legacy PC's (XP SP3, 32bit) & Windows 98se (final 3rd party patch/rollup, 4gb+ fix, large disk/3Tb+ fix, kernelEx, Blackwingcat kernel addon)

*All apps 32but/unicode unless they have a special 64bit needed exe (and there are about 5 TINY 64bit needed exe's, under 1mb, in the pack)
** No... no goanna K-melon for PWA apps.... (its too big), BUT D-Plus final webbrowser (dillo for windows) is the stand-alone engine, Green browser is the "trident" (IE) engine based (it does youtube/htmls5), (opera@usb is presto, presto is LONG dead for most sites "needs".. so is Netsurf and QTweb, for now at least...., D-Plus does what they can now @ 1.05mb)

Thanks a ton, I love this place & community!

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Midas
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Re: I want to release community "collections" (I have Dev's okays) of portable tools

#2 Post by Midas »

If you include all the original license statements and your editing doesn't contravene any of them, I'd say you're good to go.

But just considering the sheer potential volume of the pack, that is quite the hefty procurement without employing a legal team, IMHO.

So, in the end, YMMV and I'd be extra wary... :|

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webfork
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Re: I want to release community "collections" (I have Dev's okays) of portable tools

#3 Post by webfork »

I want to commend you for trying to do something different and definitely don't want to dim your interest in portable software or projects involving it. I'll just share my experience on this as once upon a time I tried something similar to try and include lots of programs into one downloadable archive. This project was not focused on small size the way your idea is, but you may run into some of the same issues.

My primary concern was the update effort, which was manual and slow, but what ended up closing the project was software license compliance. It's something I never found a workaround for since so few developers were consistent or effective at putting their source code front and center so you could download and host it, as required by many open licenses. That's improved somewhat with the advent of Github, but it's still not great. You'd think it would be right next to the download button "source code download" but at the time that was incredibly rare.

I do spend a lot of time trying to find programs that allow for "redistribution" because, as you've pointed out elsewhere, owners of software abandon ship or (sadly) die and I really don't want to mess about with the current status of the intellectual property. But likely nobody here is able to pour through several dozen licenses and efforts to get permission. Still, if it's not 100%, you'll probably get a few comments saying that it's not and that you should fix that but it's not going to get you banned to host a bunch of freeware. We just have other priorities. That said, if you want a real project with stratospheric download numbers (my project got some amazing numbers) that's an important thing to address.

I will note that there are some workarounds for this issue. Some developers like the owner of SyMenu have a system to batch download and launch with various tweaks to enable portability. Some like PortableApps get special permission to host absolutely everything necessary and have developed their own menu and download system to grab it all. So there's several approaches to the larger problem of how to get lots of great software onto your computer.

Good luck.
Last edited by webfork on Wed Dec 02, 2020 8:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: (better wording)

aazard
Posts: 51
Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2020 8:23 pm

Re: I want to release community "collections" (I have Dev's okays) of portable tools

#4 Post by aazard »

Please talk to me more about this... I do have 98% dev ok (or dev is literally dead, or "has no interest/care")

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webfork
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Re: I want to release community "collections" (I have Dev's okays) of portable tools

#5 Post by webfork »

aazard wrote: Fri Dec 04, 2020 11:47 am Please talk to me more about this... I do have 98% dev ok (or dev is literally dead, or "has no interest/care")
I'm not sure what you're asking here. More about what?

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