XChat now shareware

[BWF89]

http://www.xchat.org/windows/

The XChat devs have pretty much doomed the Windows port of their IRC client. Who's going to pay $20 for a GPL'd piece of software when theres free alternatives?

[mpettitt]

Has been for quite a while now, IIRC. Certainly there are a lot of third party projects building X-Chat for Windows for free though:
http://ovelha.kernel.ws/puto/
http://kernel.ws/~daemon404.hosting/
http://www.silverex.org/news/

[Brunellus]

this is old news. When they did this, it was just one more reason to jump to linux, because, frankly, I hate mIRC. hell, I even like irssi more than I like mirc

[majikstreet]

Woah!

Thank god we are on linux :P

[WildTangent]

Hehehe, I'm glad I have the older version that wasn't shareware. I too hate mIRC. But I love irssi, I use that on linux occassionally instead of Xchat.

-Wild

[.Danny]

There's people that are building free X-Chat's on windows so this isn't really a problem. And it's free on Linux so.. :p

[BWF89]

Doesn't really matter for me now. I switched from Firefox to SeaMonkey which has ChatZilla built in.

[TravisNewman]

it IS still open source though, right? I mean, they can charge all they want for the software as long as they have the source available. Don't want to pay for it? You don't have to, just compile it. I don't know how easy they make it, but I'm sure there are decent howtos about it

[TravisNewman]

ech, chatzilla. Bad memories. You can install Chatzilla for firefox though, just so you know.

[BWF89]

ech, chatzilla. Bad memories. You can install Chatzilla for firefox though, just so you know.
The reason I switched from Firefox to SeaMonkey is because Firefox (Windows version) has a nasty habit of deleting all my bookmarks every couple months because the file keeps getting corrupted, and it was getting worse. This morning I bookmarked a site, quit Firefox, came back an hour later the the file was corrupted again. Even after I re-installed the program.

[angrykeyboarder]

this is old news. When they did this, it was just one more reason to jump to linux, because, frankly, I hate mIRC. hell, I even like irssi more than I like mirc
I'm confused. This is about X-Chat for Windows, not mIRC.

Just on general principles, I won't use X-Chat for Linux even though it's 100% free.

X-Chat for Windows has been shareware for some time now. I was reminded of it again recently when I came across this blog post (http://www.whiprush.org/2005/10/im_all_about_ty.html), which I found rather amusing.

There are of course the various free builds of X-Chat for Windows, but they are based on the code and not by the original author.

Still I'm annoyed with the original author. I pointed out to him how many applications are cross-platfom, open source and don't cost a dime regarless of platform


If Kvirc (http://packages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=kvirc&searchon=name&subword=1&version=all&release=all), Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Seamonkey, The GIMP,
Inkscape, Pan, Nvu, OpenOffice.org, Abiword, Gaim, Sodipodi, Dia, Audacity and Gnumeric (to name a few) are open source (in all versions, including Windows) then the original X-Chat can be too.
I switched to Kvirc (http://packages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=kvirc&searchon=name&subword=1&version=all&release=all) (which is free, gpl and cross-platform (http://www.kvirc.net/)) some time ago. I was using X-Chat on both Linux and Windows but when it went Shareware on the Windows side, I dropped it everywhere on principle.

[Aeon17x]

Open source doesn't mean they can't make money off it, you know that.

[zenwhen]

While it may seem counter to the ideas of free software in some ways, I wouldn't mind if more open source Dev's would do this with their Windows versions. If we provide our work to Windows users without getting more users for our platform, we are blowing opportunities to expand our base. Also, GTK for Windows doesn't play well with third party Windows XP themes in a lot of cases.

"Power users" who are looking to have more customization on their desktop (the same people who would look into using Linux) are constantly whining about Xchat and Gaim. Firefox is a good windows citizen, and plays well with all of the themes I tried back when I still had a Windows installation. Gaim and Xchat give a lot of "power users" a bad impression of how GNU software works.

I just think that if more official project sites didn't provide free binaries and Windows installers, we might stand more of a chance of people looking to Linux to try these tools instead of downloading a Windows port. People aren't going to know where to find http://silverex.org .

[Brunellus]

I'm confused. This is about X-Chat for Windows, not mIRC.

Just on general principles, I won't use X-Chat for Linux even though it's 100% free.

X-Chat for Windows has been shareware for some time now. I was reminded of it again recently when I came across this blog post (http://www.whiprush.org/2005/10/im_all_about_ty.html), which I found rather amusing.

There are of course the various free builds of X-Chat for Windows, but they are based on the code and not by the original author.

Still I'm annoyed with the original author. I pointed out to him how many applications are cross-platfom, open source and don't cost a dime regarless of platform


I switched to Kvirc (http://packages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=kvirc&searchon=name&subword=1&version=all&release=all) (which is free, gpl and cross-platform (http://www.kvirc.net/)) some time ago. I was using X-Chat on both Linux and Windows but when it went Shareware on the Windows side, I dropped it everywhere on principle.
to clarify: because Xchat went shareware, I had to go to mIRC in Windows.

I frankly don't care anymore what he does with the windows version, as long as the linux version remains both gratis and libre. I don't have a problem necessarily with paying for software, why should I when the free and free alternative is available to me?

[Aeon17x]

From this...


this is old news. When they did this, it was just one more reason to jump to linux, because, frankly, I hate mIRC. hell, I even like irssi more than I like mirc

...to this...


to clarify: because Xchat went shareware, I had to go to mIRC in Windows.

mIRC is also shareware. All in all, you just went from an open source product you're neutral to a non-open source product you hate.

[angrykeyboarder]

Open source doesn't mean they can't make money off it, you know that.

Of course, but my point is, you just don't suddenly take something that was open source and free (as in beer - whatever the heck that means) and switch it to shareware in one version and not in the other.

I mean there is nothing legally stopping him from doing that, but...

Oh never mind.

[angrykeyboarder]

While it may seem counter to the ideas of free software in some ways, I wouldn't mind if more open source Dev's would do this with their Windows versions. If we provide our work to Windows users without getting more users for our platform, we are blowing opportunities to expand our base. Also, GTK for Windows doesn't play well with third party Windows XP themes in a lot of cases.

"Power users" who are looking to have more customization on their desktop (the same people who would look into using Linux) are constantly whining about Xchat and Gaim. Firefox is a good windows citizen, and plays well with all of the themes I tried back when I still had a Windows installation. Gaim and Xchat give a lot of "power users" a bad impression of how GNU software works.

I just think that if more official project sites didn't provide free binaries and Windows installers, we might stand more of a chance of people looking to Linux to try these tools instead of downloading a Windows port. People aren't going to know where to find http://silverex.org .
I think just the oppisite. I think a lot of open source software for Windows (notably OpenOffice.org and anything from Mozilla) has introduced a lot of Windows users to the concept of open source and thusly gotten them interested in open source operating systems like GNU/Linux.

Apparantly Mark Shuttleworth feels the same way, as Canonical (http://www.canonical.com/TheOpenCD3) took over sponsorship of and is now a major contributor to, TheOpenCD (http://www.theopencd.org/) project.

I was on a 3 year Linux "haitus" (for a variety of reasons) and I can honestly say that OSS for Windows (http://osswin.sf.net) re-ignited my interest in OSS in general. And that, was probably the number one reason I started usling Linux again (just over a year ago now).

Oh and Gaim and XChat (before it became shareware) left no bad impressions with me. Gaim is the only "alternative" I use on Windows to access IM networks.

In fact one of the nice things about Gaim on Windows is that it's much easier to update the software when new releases come out. You only have to rely on the authors of the program and not any "middleman" (e.g. Ubuntu, SuSE. Fedora, Mandriva, Debian etc, etc) so you can update it every month or so. This is true of most other OSS for Windows programs as well.

[Brunellus]

From this...



...to this...



mIRC is also shareware. All in all, you just went from an open source product you're neutral to a non-open source product you hate.
Yeah. but mirc doesn't (or hasn't?) timebombed on me. Nothing drives me up the wall like shareware timebombs.....

[Sheinar]

I actually found it quite funny that the XChat devs made the Windows version Shareware, and to be perfectly honest, it really doesn't bother me at all. I doesn't make me feel less like using the Linux version of XChat or respect the dev team any less. When I found out (I really didn't know that XChat for Windows was Shareware until lately, as I don't use Windows at all anymore.) it actually made me laugh and say "well done".

[vassie]

I use the one from here on XP http://kernel.ws/~daemon404.hosting/

Why would you ever want to pay for it?

Ben

[Aeon17x]

Why would you ever want to pay for it?

To support the authors?