Paint.NET Blog

Paint.NET was open source, but a pirate would download the code, put their name over the author’s, and click build. That’s a very clear case of copyright violation, but the author decided it wasn’t worth the effort (especially if the pirate is in another country). https://blog.getpaint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-of-%E2%80…

Anyone wondering as to why Paint.NET transitioned to closed source may find this insightful: https://blog.getpaint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-of-%E2%80…

The only person I've ever heard of really hit the ball out of the park with donations is Rick Brewster (Paint.NET). He has some interesting blog articles about the subject which Google will bring up. http://blog.getpaint.net/2007/07/13/making-money-with-freeware-tip-1-h… More typical is SyntaxHighlighter, which is the JS syntax highlighting thing that everyone and their dog uses on their blog. The author has raised about $100 in donations so far (number pulled off site). I'm one quarter of that, because his software saved me so much work I donated the USD equivalent of one sale of my software to him. Since he started accepting donations his software has been, conservatively, downloaded several hundred thousand times by people who use it to increase their commercial and professional opportunities. Compare that to commercial software for a moment: I sell about a hundred dollars worth of licenses to my bingo thingee a day, on rather substantially less than several hundred thousand installs. Which is a long way to say "Charge money for value". (Relatedly, I am reminded of a good line I heard from a developmental economist once: Only one country ever got rich from foreign aid, and the Vatican is not a great model for Africa.)

Here is one such story of regret for paint.net (not my project but I'm a fan). I think the author's take was quite reasonable for this project. https://blog.getpaint.net/2009/11/06/a-new-license-for-paintnet-v35/

The author blogged about it in 2009 [1] TL;DR They used a MIT licence and other people were selling broken, rebranded cashgrab copies without changing things like the installer or crash logs being sent to the author etc [1] https://blog.getpaint.net/2009/11/06/a-new-license-for-paintnet-v35/

see https://blog.getpaint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-of-%E2%80… Someone tried to claim it as their own by repackaging it and packaging up some plugins... He obviously got annoyed and figured he doesn't want to make it so easy to make your own version. It adds up for me, just kind of unfortunate, I'd like to think it still would've been better off open, but it's his creation and his time and effort so if that's what he wants to do, I'm ok with it.

It is available in the Windows store https://blog.getpaint.net/2017/09/29/paint-net-is-now-available-on-the…

Oh I didn't know that Paint.NET closed source. I found a blog post about the decision, an interesting read. Here it is: https://blog.getpaint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-of-%E2%80…

It's not, it's just that progress towards 4.0 has been slow: http://blog.getpaint.net/2013/03/30/paint-net-4-0-brushes-and-shapes-a…

If you ask them to they'll probably remove the crapware. Paint.NET is no longer bundled with anything due to the author contacting them about it. http://blog.getpaint.net/2011/10/03/paint-net-v3-5-9-and-download-com/

And unfortunately that culture is directly damaging the open-source ecosystem on Windows. For instance the author of Paint.NET (a former open-source project) started releasing only binaries because some individual ripped off his work, taking all the credits (in breach of its license), and probably bundling it with spyware / charging money for it ... http://blog.getpaint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-of-%E2%80%… http://blog.getpaint.net/2009/11/06/a-new-license-for-paintnet-v35/ To see your work used like that, most likely without a Thank You, probably hurts a lot.

Link didn't work for me. http://blog.getpaint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-of-%e2%80%…

>I wrote that four years ago, but the ads are as bad today as they were then But to be fair (and mind you I am not particularly appreciative of Paint.Net nor of this new "procurement model", as the two things I have an allergy for are .Net and the Windows Store ;) ) a large part of the Internet has similar download pages (with deceiving ads), which is not an "excuse" or a "good thing" but surely it is something with which any internet user has by now learned to avoid or workaround. I would put the blame also (and mainly) on those that allow such deceiving ads to be served to these (or similar) download pages (aka Google). However I would instead underline how in this blog post there is no mention of/link to www.getpaint.net, while there is (as an example) a clear one in the first line of the blog post for the previous release: https://blog.getpaint.net/2017/07/20/paint-net-4-0-17-is-now-available… So - understandably - the Author attempts to push a little bit the "Windows Store" source, maybe - indirectly or at a subliminal level - hinting that "experts" can have it for free (because they can actually find the download page and link) while "n00bs" will better be paying the "entry ticket" and go to the Windows Store ...

I'll put this comment here as a response to sibling and child comments about Paint.NET and to defend the author (Rick Brewster) regarding misleading installers. Rick has had numerous problems over time with scammers wrapping Paint.NET with scumbag installers and with "backspaceware" distributions. He's documented these issues in his blog: http://blog.getpaint.net/2009/11/06/a-new-license-for-paintnet-v35/ http://blog.getpaint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-of-%E2%80%… http://blog.getpaint.net/2011/10/03/paint-net-v3-5-9-and-download-com/ http://blog.getpaint.net/2010/12/22/photoshop-filters-and-more-silly-b… For as long as I've used Paint.NET (since v1) his home page and download page have never obfuscated or tried to lure users into downloading and installing crapware. EDIT: Just turned off my adblocker and see I'm sadly very wrong about the crapware download ads. My other points still stand though.