Parted Magic Is Still Free

[Ferdinand]

<sarcasm>And here we see the true spirit of open source, instead of supporting the developer and making sure that can continue developing we go the cheapo way and torrent it, so that we don't have to pay the enormous amount of 5$.</sarcasm>

Don't get me wrong, it is totally legal to torrent it, but it says a lot about your mindset and ethics.

I would like a better way of supporting the developer. Places like Steam and GOG not only give me a way of supporting the developers put also give me a way of building up a collection.

[Alessandro]

I absolutely agree that Patrick Verner has put a *lot* of work and love in this project, it is my favourite open source project and I have been recommending it for years.
Personally I have absolutely nothing against donating him 5 dollars, or even 10.
The problem is, making an open source project paid has always killed it. I could name endless examples. Also, making a living or a viable business out of OSS has never worked, except maybe for Red Hat.
I don't know exactly why people do not want to spend money for a good open source project. Personally I have paid quite some money for Linux distributions. But many simply can't. For some even 5 dollars are a lot of money. Others have no way of paying online.

[Kano]

The main app is gparted and everybody can create iso images with that. I see no huge deal to update gparted if it would be needed but i still use an older version with a hotfix that allows me to create fat filesystems on raid devices. Thats the main bug i found, no idea what else was fixed. If somebody provides an iso image with only gparted and some extra tools or not does not affect me at all. If somebody has a gparted ppa and writes a little script that creates another live image with that repository the effect would be the same. Debian Live is for simple projects very easy to use - for Kanotix there are LOTS of hacks, but for this app i would not care for those optimisations.

[Alessandro]

Hi Kano

Glad to see you here

I used your distribution for years, it was my main OS. But then things change in life...

Nowadays I use mainly OS X

[chrcoluk]

Signed up here just to post my thoughts.

The author of this software is lucky I have used it before, I have used this and gparted amd this is way better. However if I had never used it before I wouldnt know that, there is no trial or free use as such, I only know as I used it in the past.

He also better be prepared to support his product as I also remember in the past I had a hell of a time getting it to boot on my laptop, the kernel and bootloader were both finicky on the hardware.

I paid for the yearly subscription, however I will not be renewing it, I paid because the software helped me a lot before and I consider this playment for that, because of his plight. however his pricing model I cannot back up.

5usd is not a lot of money to buy software I agree, however it is a lot when it has to be paid for each new version. I dont know of any software that sells in this capacity, usually its either lifetime (getting rarer admittedly) or at least for a fixed period of time. I feel his 50usd for a year is overpriced, especially for people who have never used it before and are esentially taking a punt. Of course this can be looked in other ways, someone might be using it 100s of times a day commercially in which case 50usd a year is great value, but another person might be using it for personal use maybe once or twice a year. In that case 5usd is maybe reasonable 50usd probably not. But paying got a single version with no updates is hard to swallow. I feel he has gone too agressive, and to read that he was planning to charge more than 5usd for the single download as well, wow.

[findftp]

I'm not sure I still want to use this software.
Just for the record. This is the email conversation I just had:
-------
Me: Hi,

I want a download link and want to pay with bitcoin.
How much bitcoin do you want?

Greetings,
Me
--------
Patrick Verner:

http://partedmagic.com/bitcoin/

--------
Me: Are you serious about this answer?
Don't you think I went there already?

How much bitcoin do you want? I don't see a price.
---------
Patrick Verner:
Go to a torrent site asshole.
---------
Me: Dude! I want to pay for the software.
What is your problem?
I don't see a price on the page you gave me.
Why do you call me an asshole
--------


And for now that's the end of the conversation.
Makes you wonder...

[Alessandro]

Now we can say with absolute certainty that *he* is an asshole. His distribution was popular and respected, and certainly he got donations. But even a child knows that when you make open source software paid people will go away. Parted Magic is almost forgotten, look at Distrowatch. Others tried before, long before Parted Magic: Mandrake/Mandriva, Lindows/Linspire, Xandros, even the beautiful Libranet... Where are they now?

[duby229]

Now we can say with absolute certainty that *he* is an asshole. His distribution was popular and respected, and certainly he got donations. But even a child knows that when you make open source software paid people will go away. Parted Magic is almost forgotten, look at Distrowatch. Others tried before, long before Parted Magic: Mandrake/Mandriva, Lindows/Linspire, Xandros, even the beautiful Libranet... Where are they now?

There is close to no chance that Distrowatch counts me at all. The only two things it really counts are inexperienced people that came across that site that are searching for a distro and experienced people that are searching for a distro to fill a specific need.

And the thing is the difference between those major distro's you mentioned and this is obviously scale. I don't think there's anything wrong with this man earning an income from his hard work.

[Alessandro]

Parted Magic was mentioned and popular at Distrowatch before becoming paid. The point is not whether it is right or wrong for this man to earn an income, the point is whether he made an error in judgement. I can't know for certain of course, but probably he was earning more in donations than now he is from paying customers

[Patrick Verner]

I'm not sure I still want to use this software.
Just for the record. This is the email conversation I just had:

Posting a private email conversation on a public forum while using a fake name. What kind of person would do that? I know, an asshole.

I should post his last email response, but I have respect for people's privacy.