Illegal software Questioning...

I was wondering, do you have permission to be distributing this software? I am 99.9% sure that your copy of Firefox is illegal (it violates trademarks) and I'm 100% sure that opera from portableappz.com is also illegal because all their software is illegal. I realize that you seem to try and be as legal as possible but I've searched your website and have found nothing that makes me think that both Firefox and Opera is legal. I suggest Opera@USB for a web browser.

About Firefox, we are waiting for a new authorization for the software distribution (we have sent an email to ask for the new release). About portableappz.com, we know that they actually distribute some illegal software, so we are verifying if all their software is not legally usable (they started with legal distributions and we began to use a few of their apps). Anyway in this case we have already obtained the authorization from both Opera team and the author of Opera@USB (we will probably migrate to it in the next release).
Thanks for the report and sorry for these issues..

I checked your website again and still see that Firefox is still on there. Why are you still releasing the app is you know that its illegal? Also you need to update it to version 3.5.3. (portableapps.com is WAY ahead of you).

... Pyromaniac!!!!

I like portableapps.com and what they do (and their success show the importance of the project), but it's so bad to see people that try and desire to spoil other person's projects.

so why are you doing that? I mean its John Haller's project not YOURS. and "plus" improved by LUPO??? Wow. You've also stolen all of the source codes and such and you KNOW its illegal.

And I wasn't trying to spoil your project. I was just curious.

http://portableapps.com/node/20885#comment-129068

I dare you do delete this forum topic.

John T. Haller (Homepage) - October 2, 2009 - 7:10pm

The Mozilla apps with add-ons are all illegal and in violation of the trademark license/guidelines. I don't think they have permission on the OpenOffice.org rename either. Most of the time they call it plus to try and make it seem like they built it even though it's just our app with an extension added or something similar. It's just someone repackaging stuff from elsewhere.

John T. Haller (Homepage) - October 7, 2009 - 3:34pm

In case you're wondering, "we are waiting for a new authorization" means they don't have permission and are doing it illegally right now. They're also unlikely to get permission.

And on the stuff from the illegal site, Lupo knows full-well that everything on that site is illegal. The site *started* with all illegal stuff like cracked versions of Photoshop and the like. And a good chunk of the 'open source' releases includes GPLed code stolen from us which they have modified and refused to release the source of. So Lupo is complicit in illegally using our stolen code in his suite. Not surprising, but good to know.

The choice to rename apps with Plus is linked to a request of other projects to avoid confusion between distributions, but the content of most of them is deliberately the same of original portable releases and without modifications or adding of extensions because some licenses doesn't allow it.
I don't know why John says "everything on that site is illegal", probably he don't like my project (my because I have some collaborators, but differently to most of other similar projects I'm essentially the only maintainer of it, that makes a little more complex manage it). Software included follow licenses, open source codes are available separately as usual, GNU GPL license copies are included in software packages, software are not modified or cracked, nor included additional tools or extensions if respective licenses don't allow it.
The software database is a huge list, with most of apps available from external websites, that I add essentially when users report them. For most of them I make a few tests and delve into that software I found most interesting. Unfortunately I don't have enough time to deeply examine all of them, but try to follow all users advices.
Mozilla software distribution was authorized some time ago (with restriction to keep the portableapps package and without adding extensions by default, that I removed since that request), now we have contacted Mozilla team to ask a full authorization for distribution.
As reported by Pyromaniac, the previous Opera release was not authorized, so I have replaced it with OperaUSB (after have obtained authorization).