Hard NOT to violate GPL

For some reason, many of the people who create this great software for some reason hide their source code.  However, in order to redistribute their software, its required by the GPL that you include the GPL or at least make the GPL available on your own servers.  Since I don't have a server of my own, obviously this means a 2nd torrent with all the source code packaged into it.

Here is where I'm stuck: this process is slow and more than doubles the burden of keeping all my software up to date, which was already a task within itself.  I don't want to violate the GPL, a license that has given me so much.  I don't want to distribute something that doesn't have the whole tool chest inside it.  I already had to take out Firefox and Thunderbird and I'd rather not remove any more.

The search for solutions continues and please do comment if you have ideas.

Update Kitchen Sink and keep settings?

Someone posted about this and here's my best answer:

I don't know of a way to do that for sure, no.  There are many programs and many different ways of saving one's settings.  Remember however that portable programs have the great talent for running alongside old versions of themselves.  You can keep your settings and still run the latest version.

That said, some of the included programs will neatly sync to the old version and won't interfere with saved settings.  Unfortunately, programs like FileZilla for example require that you have a very specific file: fzdefaults.xml to behave as portable.  This is also where other settings (such as FTP sites) also save setting so overwriting it with the latest version means you'll lose that information.

Here's the best (admittedly not great) way to do it:

1. Back up programs you use frequently (or the entire archive) whose settings you don't want to lose.
   
2. Run FreeFileSync (included in the latest version)
   
3. Compare folders between the old kitchen sink and the new kitchen sink
4. Right-click on files that look like they might contain settings usually with names like "ini" files and "settings" .  Chose "Exclude temporarily"
   

The updating process is a big problem in software that only programs like Firefox and Thunderbird are so far able to address.

Anyone have suggestions?

Source code and scam notice

I am gradually starting to host the source code of included programs.  I apologize for not having that out sooner but I thought linking to the sites was enough.  This thread addresses that transition.

Scam notice: Downloadbay is currently hosting a Kitchen Sink 1.3 "crack," which is interesting considering nothing in Kitchen Sink requires registration.  Downloadbay is obviously total crap Google shouldn't even link to.

On hold for job seeking

Things have gotten much tighter on my side and the search for work has taken on a bigger role. Anyone looking for a documentation guy, technical writer, or software tester, please email me!

For now the project is unfortunately on the backburner.

No-Moz

Its not looking like Mozilla is going to give me permission to distribute Firefox as John Haller predicted.  This brings up the question, would anyone want to download something called "The Kitchen Sink" that's missing Firefox?  Additionally, as I make my way through programs and come up with a license list, I'm finding that non-redistribution licenses are gradually chipping away at included programs.  This is attacking the basic point of the project. a tested, single-source, everything-in-one-place freeware tool.

By this rationale, it looks like either my self-updating idea is going to happen or this project is going to hit too big of a snag to continue.

How to help

A few people have asked now so I thought I'd put out a todo list.  If anyone can help me with any of this, I'd appreciate it:

High priority / key stuff:

• Help fill out this spreadsheet listing licenses and homepage / source code.
  
• Discover if we need to remove programs or ask the author for permission if they don't allow for redistribution.

Other help:

• Help develop the wiki over at SourceForge.  Just general updates and improvement.  Once they've matured I'll remove the Google Docs pages that make up the current documentation.  Note: I may need to add you as an editor -- can't seem to fix those permissions to allow just any SourceForge user.
  
• Send ideas, feature, and program suggestions.  It might take a while, but I always read those carefully.
  
• Contribute ideas and bring power over at PFC Forums -- their work impacts this project more than any other.
  

Wish list / low priority:

• Everything from the Roadmap page
• Help me put together something to download and auto-install programs (such as windows scripting tool Auto-It).  That way, I can just allow users to get programs that prohibit redistribution from legit sources.
• Develop a Secure Add-On Collection to share Kitchen Sink's Firefox security settings with everyone.

(I apologize to Guiness who left some comments and are no longer there.  Please re-post if you can.)

MediaWiki conversion issues

Good lord this sucks: the HTML filter converter to MediaWiki format is giving me no end of problems, with weird characters, non-standard tags, and a big headache.

I've tried 7 different converters for MS Word, OpenOffice, and others and having absolutely no luck.

This is why self-contained software is so important. They are so very lacking in BS: stupid file dependencies (you need Java! Oop wait that doesn't work either!), version numbers (wrong version of Word!), and out of date software.

Update: I directly installed OpenOffice with Java. It has an export-to-MediaWiki by default. That did the trick.

Project Delay

The process of looking up all 200 programs is proving to be much slower than I thought: not all the developers have clear license information and often you have to dig through a given Web site to find it. I think that -- like me -- license issues are mostly an afterthought for techy people, especially for creators of small applications.

Its also important for me to put out the best quality Kitchen Sink I can with all programs as up to date as possible, so it seems unlikely I'll finish by Sunday. More as things progress.

Update: I timed myself today and found that I completed about 10 entries every hour. Tracking down licenses is just hard sometimes.

With about 120 licenses still undiscovered, that's a lot of work ahead.

One Mozilla trademark solution

An alert reader (thanks Wes) pointed this out to me: Iceweasel. Love the name.

Its unlikely I'll take the same track and spend a lot of time dealing with sourcecode. Instead I'll focus on encourage users at install to download and install Firefox and Thunderbird themselves with an optional pre-packaged and frequently-updated XPI file to put in the plug-ins for recommended security. (Similar to these collections of plugins.)

Cleaning up license issues

I knew that as Kitchen Sink got bigger, it would bring more problems. I was prepared for that, but I didn't know how out of compliance I am with the included licenses. I am not a lawyer and licenses are not written for regular people.

Mozilla

I can't seem to figure out how to contact the organization about its licensing scheme. The web site info page is unclear at best and they don't have any contact information for additional questions on that topic. Its as if to say "lawyers only". Not very community oriented. I'm worried that if I can't get this cleared up that nobody will want the Kitchen Sink without Firefox.

The owner of PortableApps.com got special permission to redistribute Firefox but hasn't gotten back to me on who he talked to. Admittedly, its not his problem.

GPL

In the process of all this, I realized its possible that I may have deleted a GPL notice somewhere along the line, which is not surprisingly expressly against the GPL. So now I've got to go back and dig through all my programs that are GPL'd and verify that they have some kind of notice. I have a cleanup process with all the included software to remove useless information that sometimes catches good files.

One option is to reinstall EVERY program and at least attempt to read the included license and anything I don't understand or can't decipher will probably have to be thrown out. This could take weeks.

Other Programs

This is looking like an unending process: someone is always about to email me about one of the over 200 different programs asking me to take out or add some component. My collection is 400 megs -- who wants to download the latest version that's fully compliant when only like 4 kilobytes of data on one of the licenses are different? I don't have a CVS server to post nightly uploads and my users consistently ask for me NOT to distribute things via the web, but through Torrents.

Summary

A lot of unexpected problems but I'll try to get them cleared up. Lupo contacted me and invited me to work on his project (which is growing in appeal) but I still think Kitchen Sink has something unique and important to provide to the community.

I've taken down my donation page, since I'm not really distributing anything anymore.

Kitchen Sink currently offline

So just got a letter from the owner of portableapps.com saying that I'm violating trademark law, the GPL, and several software licenses.

Unfortunately Kitchen Sink will need to be offline until I can get that ironed out.  Here's why:

• I'm doing this for the love as I'm not getting paid.  I've got some revenue sources (adwords and donations), but I have yet to make a dime off either one.
  
• I'm unemployed and don't make near enough money to hire a lawyer to help me make sure I'm totally in compliance with 200 different licenses.
  
• I'm a big fan of the GPL and violating the license even implicitly is not something I'm comfortable with.
  

If I can't get this cleared up, I'll shutter the project for good.

Serious bug

I'm not sure how this didn't get caught earlier but the program isn't extracting. I will be posting a 1.11 tonight that will include an updated Pstart menu version and a fixed self-extracting program as well as a few other changes.

I think I know what went wrong in the compression process and I know how to fix it. Big thanks from me and Kitchen Sink's users to Guinness for catching the Pstart issue, the Self-Extract bug, and a lot of other work over time.

Firefox Error

So Firefox was having problems on a recent install, giving me a pretty nasty error message (below). Turns out it was a permissions issue that happens when copying from read-only media (like a USB drive with write-protect enabled). This sometimes makes Windows think the data is also read-only. Follow the instructions on this page next to "File permissions," but also check to make sure your drive isn't full.

"Could not initialize the application's security component. The most likely cause is problems with files in your application's profile directory. Please check that this directory has no read/write restrictions and your hard disk is not full or close to full. It is recommended that you exit the application and fix the problem. If you continue to use this session, you might see incorrect application behaviour when accessing security features."

Questions!

Anyone have any ideas on these issues?

1. Shortcut Keys (for example Ctrl+Shift+F starts Firefox) I can set them up through PStart since the HotKeyz program doesn't work with relative path names and is only favored because it works with Winamp after its started.  Addicitonally, Winamp is rapidly losing status as making new versions portable seems impossible.  However, I'm not sure if:

• What those shortcuts should be (should probably be one unified sequence like ctrl+alt+shift)
  
• What they would activate (Firefox?  OpenOffice?).

2. Exceptions To this point I've had a policy against putting in software that PortableFreeware hasn't approved, with the exception of TightVNC Client and Server.  Unfortunately I'm really getting a lot out of WinSplit Revolution (did a review here) even though it hasn't been accepted by PortableFreeware yet.  Its just so fantastic.  Any thoughts?

3. Recommendations These three programs are coming strongly recommended: Inkscape, Unstoppable Copier, Fastcopy, FreeFileSync .  Anyone think they belong in the archive?

1.0 Release issues

The list below is pretty long so obviously a version 1.1 is called for. Hope to have that out in 2 or 3 weeks.

Look and Feel:

• Icons for "View Browser History" and "Web Editing" are the same.
  
• Decided I needed an icon refresh and get away from the cartoonish look.
• Added a background image for the freeware menu: eiffel tower by xAnotherPrettyFacex ... waiting on her permission to actually use this photo.
  

Updates / Cleanup:

• Firefox 3.5 came out JUST after my release. This alone might be reason enough to update.
  
• Several programs (I didn't realize this) are out of date: Audiobook cutter, Bonkenc, Wavosaur, Mediainfo, GPU-z, ShowMyPC, as well as TED Notepad (which JUST came out), and TaskCoach, filezilla, and Xinorbis.
  
• Had some annoyances/problems on another machine with InfraRecorder, Money Manager Ex, and Tor. Going to try reinstalling.
• Need to clean up Winamp playlist menu - looks very unprofessional
• Hidden XP Utilities doesn't really belong in Support subfolder -- its not really a support program.
• Somehow I neglected to actually add PhotoRec and TestDisk to the menu. Sigh.
• Need to try and cleanup Audacity and Feedreader's language files.
• Noted in the menu that System Information Viewer is a "Dashboard"-style program
• Universal Extractor will open Stuffit files (which supports these formats). Need to add those to CAFE.
  
• Move Toucan from USB tools to "backup" because its definitely NOT exclusive to USB devices.
  

Added/Removed Programs:

• Threw out FLACDrop since BoncEnc had a much newer FLAC encoder (1.1.3 compared to 1.2.1). Oggdrop is the same, LameDrop I can't tell if its up to date or not so I'll just leave it.
  
• Hash does what WinMD5Sum does -- I like the simplicity of the program but decided this was duplicate functionality. WinMD5Sum removed.
• Problems with DrvBackup -- going to switch to DriverBackup 1.3, which has better reviews and is GPL'd.
• Ant Movie Catalog. Their great "finder" feature that takes a little information and fills in the rest from the internet doesn't seem to work anymore. Very disappointing ... removed from the archive.
• Removed TCExplorer. Doesn't work with the current version of TrueCrypt.
• PlannerPortable was in the install but not actually on the menu. I was evaluating this program and decided to take this out but apparently didn't delete the home folder.
• CurrPorts has a plugin update that comes highly recommended. Going to test that out and put in the archive.
  

Known Problems:

• Still don't know how to update Winamp
• AAST and Texter - giving a "update" notice but the sites don't have updates. Working on this.
  
• Pstart folder double-click problem (opens every file underneath)
• WeatherMate DLL file Not working in win2k - msvcp60.dll

Update:

As Vishnu says in the comments below, I missed 3 programs that should have been in the Pstart menu:

• JavaRa
• Opened Files view
• Mp3Direct cut

(Thanks very much for the help on that.)

Assigned drive letters problem

Problem:
Your system is auto-assigning drive letters for your USB drive that are causing problems.  For example with a file synchronization program that keeps expecting to see the drive on letter "E" but your computer keeps changing it.

Solution:
Control which letter goes to which drive with this program (non-portable).  I haven't tested it but it comes strongly recommended.

Running in Crossover for Mac

Documentation available including installation instructions, programs that work, programs that don't work and various other notes.  Should also cover many WINE installations.

Especially pleased with the performance of the 7-zip compression software with this setup.

Windows 2000 problems

Finally had the chance to test the software out on an earlier Windows OS. Issues below.

Programs that won't start:

• WeatherMate -- DLL file missing - msvcp60.dll.
• Iron Browser
  
• DrvBackup
• Foobar2000 - I checked this out and there are no plans by their team to fix this
  

Other problems

• Shellfish Anti-Keylogger Keyboard starts but doesn't work.
• Firefox Secure icon breaks but otherwise still functional.
  
• Winxmove - appears to open multiple copies ... repeatedly.
  
• Tor - won't start but may have had a conflict with my firewall, not Windows 2000.
  
• Hard Disk Indicator for some reason creates an all-gray background for the desktop. Very distracting.
  
• xp-Antispy and Config for XP - don't work for for obvious reasons.

Pstart questions

1.When I start the program, I get a weird error message about Pstart.xml. I think the file is corrupted. What do I do?

Just delete the old Pstart.xml file and rename "Pstart.bak" to "Pstart.xml" and you should be back online. I don't know why this happens but its come up a few times for me over the life of the program.

2. Icons not portable - I'm creating my own Pstart menu for my own collection and trying to use the different icon for each folder idea you use. Unfortunately, its not showing up right on other people's computers. (paraphrasing Russ)

A. If they're using Windows 2000, you'll have some mixed experience with icons. I don't know why.

B. If I were you I would pull up the Pstart menu XML file and look at the code directly.

It should say something like:

<files name="Internet">
<icon>web.ico</icon>

I would keep all the alternative icons in the same directory as Pstart. No reason really, just how I do it and it works for me.

Flight delays due to lack of fuel

Because of troubles over at portablefreeware with Dreamhost in the past few weeks and PortableApps focus on an Installer platform rather than new or updated software, there haven't been a great deal of accepted updates by the community to add to the next Kitchen Sink collection. As a result, I'm going to change the release schedule to every 4 months and hopefully there will be more of a reason to post. Need more time to find a BitTorrent distribution system anyhow.

In the meantime, I'll be focusing on my portablefreewarereviews site, which will hopefully help me find new and better software to throw in.

Update: Of course right after I write this, both sites put out updates. Sigh.