[Tuxpaint-users] Reduced advertising in the Tux Paint project

[Bill K. <nb...@so...>]

Hi all, this is Bill Kendrick, original creator and lead developer of
Tux Paint.


Over the years I have 'monetized' the Tux Paint project, to help
make it "worth the effort" for me and my family.

Some of this came through obvious advertising on the tuxpaint.org
website (Google Adsense, SecretBuilders).  Some was through
less-overt advertising on the website ('sponsorship' links).

And back in 2011, I was approached by OpenCandy, a very nice and helpful
company that helps monetize software (especially free & open source software)
by providing 'recommendations' for other software to download during the
installation process.  (i.e., "you're installing Tux Paint, maybe you also
want to install Game XYZ")


Over the past few weeks, I decided to begin removing the advertising
from the Tux Paint website.  The website is hosted for free by
IO Cooperative <https://iocoop.org/>, and the project itself (source code,
downloads & bandwidth) is hosted for free by
SourceForge <https://sourceforge.net/>.  Therefore, all I pay for out of
pocket is the domain name registration and DNS.

While doing this, I had also been considering taking down the OpenCandy
version of Tux Paint -- or, at the very least, not releasing future versions
of Tux Paint with OpenCandy.

Today I noticed a bug filed against Tux Paint over at SourceForge
complaining that the OpenCandy installer should be considered adware/spyware.
I don't agree with that terminology, and I have also always provided an
OpenCandy-free installer for users (right on the same page).
However, based on this, I've decided to go ahead and take down the link to
the OpenCandy version effective today.


I want to thank OpenCandy, as well as the many other sponsors who
have helped encourage Tux Paint's development over the years. (Money = coffee)
I've tried to maintain a list of them here:
http://tuxpaint.org/links/#sponsors


In the meantime, to the rest of you, enjoy a more ad-free Tux Paint experience!

-- 
-bill!
Sent from my computer