Best places to submit your freeware?

[wysota]

qt-apps.org is a good place to go and sourceforge.net is probably the biggest repository of freeware applications.

[fullmetalcoder]

Doesn't Sourceforge require Open Source license? And the same apply to Qt-Apps.org AFAIK. I think Qt-Prop.org is the right place for closed-source Qt apps.

[wysota]

Doesn't Sourceforge require Open Source license?

As far as I know, no.

And the same apply to Qt-Apps.org AFAIK.

Yes, this one is correct.

I think Qt-Prop.org is the right place for closed-source Qt apps.

I seem to have misunderstood the word 'freeware' in this context Now the question is why close the sources if the application is free (as in free beer)?

[seneca]

Now the question is why close the sources if the application is free (as in free beer)?

Protect hard earned knowledge?
Avoid getting target of patent trolls?

[wysota]

Protect hard earned knowledge?

You can still do that with OS application while allowing anyone to learn from your code.

Avoid getting target of patent trolls?

Security through obscurity? Or better yet "legality through obscurity"?

The only thing I can think of is if you use a solution that has a licence denying its use in open source applications (regardless of providing or not the source code of the solution itself). But I have never heard of such a thing

[seneca]

Or better yet "legality through obscurity"?

Absolutely. Patents are the biggest treat to open source.

[wysota]

The fact that nobody knows you are breaking a law doesn't mean you are not breaking it. And on the other end, existance of an open-source solution doesn't mean anyone can take it and apply for a patent. "open source" doesn't mean "copyleft" or "public domain". If you release a piece of open source code, you are still its author and are protected by law. You can even patent the code yourself if you want.

[seneca]

No matter if your code really infringes somebodies patent (how could you ever know that without your own professional legal department at all?), when you get sued from a big player you as a small OS developer will most likely be ruined before the case is decided.

Sure you may have chance to win such a case if organizations such as FSF find it in line with theire political agenda - but then your project must be popular enough such as apache, linux, php etc. So most developers should not count on that, and better in first place avoid all the trouble. By not exposing source you dont give the opponent the amunnition to shoot against yourself.

Don't get me wrong, I have released substantial amounts of OS myself, but I understand why people are reluctant to do such these days.

[wysota]

Still, "* through obscurity" is not the way. One can always reverse engineer your code or sue you because of some ridiculous reason or claim, so not revealing your source code will not change things much. I can understand the "I'm afraid someone will steal my code so I want to hide it" case but not "I will not show my code because I can get sued" one.

[seneca]

You could then also say "dont change default passwords because every password can be cracked". Or "publish your credit card numbers on your website, because the waiter in the restaurant has seen it anyway".

Like it or not, but obscuring has its reason in real world.

[wysota]

It's not like that. You can and should protect sensitive information in any possible way, but only the information itself, not the algorithms that operate on it. So in case of your examples the password protection algorithm and credit card money transfer protocol can (and should) be open as they are/should not be a protection mechanism themselves, that's a false feeling of safety. Obscurity is only a good method if it is done temporarily (for instance delaying the information about a possible bug in a system until the bug itself is fixed or a cure is known/distributed).

Furthermore the "openess" of the protocol or algorithm is becoming more and more of an requirement when dealing with really sensitive things, like the military or government. Obscurity hides the information from everybody - not only from the "bad guys" but also from the "good guys" making it harder to verify and/or validate the algorithm/protocol/whatever.

To sum things up, obscuring has only one reason in "real world" - laziness (or greed). Why make a flawless solution when we can make a not-bad one in quarter that time and hide all the flaws it has? Maybe nobody will notice and we can get away with it...

[AlphaWolf]

Someone has to stop these fucking software patents