Finding Freeware Listing Sites?

A not-so Anonymous Coward asks: "CNET's download.com has become a 'pay to list' service, so it doesn't make sense to list freeware there, anymore. What are the best alternatives? Also, you cannot post linux software there anymore for any price: 'Note: We are no longer accepting any new submissions for Linux, and we will be discontinuing all coverage of Linux on our download sites shortly.' What is the hard working but generous coder supposed to do?"

Comments

The answer:

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the hard working but generous coder supposed to do?

Start writing Windows shareware obviously.

Re:The answer:

[leifm]

When I was taking VB6, which was unfortunately required for my degree, my teacher was sitting in class one day 'coding' something, and someone asks him what he's doing. And he says with a straight face "I'm writing a screensaver that will display pictures from a directory and after 5 pictures it locks up and they have to pay me $30 to continue using it"

A few for the newbie...

[singularity]

A few that some newbies may not have thought about:

FreshMeat, which will do a lot for your Linux software needs.

SourceForge for GPL software hosting (CVS and bug tracking, even)

For a more general software needs, VersionTracker, which started with Mac software, now lists Mac, OS X, Windows, and Palm software. For anything other than Macintosh listings, though, it tends to be somewhat limited.

Tocows also lists a lot of software. I have not looked through their Linux listings, but the Mac listings are pretty decent.

No Linux? What the......

[Asprin]

Discontinuing all Linux support? Did I miss something or did sombody BUY Cnet this week?

Oh, I see the problem now. Take a look at this snippet from the new upload.com web page:

Welcome to the new Upload.com! Submitting your software product through Upload.com gets you listed in CNET Networks' download library, which delivers 2.5 million downloads per day. The basic processing fee is $79 to list your product in Download.com, ZDNet Downloads, and MSN Downloads.

Does anyone know who owns Cnet?



(Yeah, probably a troll, but not really. I'm genuine about the "who owns them" question because it just seems like an odd choice to make, you know, like Netscape announcing they're laying off 50 Netscape developers a couple of weeks after signing the MS agreement that gives them IE for seven years. It's just odd, you know?)

Re:Sourceforge and Freshmeat might help

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the TOS for sourceforge sometime. Any code you submit via CVS may be used by sourceforge and affiliates (ie all of VA Linux incuding slashdot) under any license they desire.

So while you may use their cvs for a GPL project, va linux can make a proprietary fork of it at anytime, or sell the rights to use the code to a commercial company.

That's the reason that mysql uses p4 for versioning, and only uses sf.net for binary downloads.

Savannah.gnu.org is a GPL fork of sourceforge used primarily for GNU projects, but will host any GPL project. BSD/other licenses don't care about proprietary forks, so sf.net is still useable for cvs.

Mods - before you kneejerk me down to -1, I suggest you do give the sf.net TOS a very thorough reading.

Tinyapps

[zhiwenchong]

Tinyapps has some nice gems for Win32. The collection is not very big though.

Re:Sourceforge and Freshmeat might help

[rmohr02]

From the sf.net TOS (emphasis mine):

6. LICENSING AND OTHER TERMS APPLYING TO CODE AND OTHER CONTENT POSTED ON SOURCEFORGE.NET: ...
With respect to text or data entered into and stored by publicly-accessible site features such as message boards and bug trackers ("SourceForge.net Public Content"), the submitting user retains ownership of such SourceForge.net Public Content; with respect to publicly-available statistical content which is generated by the site to monitor and display project activity, such content is owned by SourceForge.net. In each such case, the submitting user grants SourceForge.net the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all subject to the terms of any applicable approved license.

So they still have to stick with an OSI-approved license, but there's a world of difference between licenses such as MIT and BSD compared to the GPL.

www.nonags.com

[michaelredux]

www.nonags.com identifies "free" (as in beer) software that has "no nags" (no nag screens or crippled features). they have a good selection of open source software as well as "freely-distributable" (binary only) software.

Re:Sourceforge and Freshmeat might help

[PMcGovern]

This paragraph (#6) is intended for text entered in tracker items, mailng lists archives and other posts you, the user, might enter onto SourceForge.net.

(Most sites have similar paragraphs to protect themselves from liability issues)

A project's code on SourceForge.net is different. The OSI license you use to release the code is the license that stands. If we, OSDN, ever decided to fork a project, we would have to follow the same rules and regulations that are governed in the project's OSI license. (no different then anyone else wishing to fork the code)

I hope this clears things up a bit.

Patrick McGovern
Director, SourceForge.net
pat@sf.net