We should play this up more on our site, but Ninite (I'm a co-founder and we're YC W08) does this stuff right.
All our .exes are signed, app config information comes over https, and downloads are all checked for hashes that match our testing before being automated. We're not just naively adding silent switches either, we'll automate clicks to get through less well-behaved installers when needed.
Why can you trust Ninite? Money. Thousands of businesses pay us for Ninite Pro and the free version is our marketing department. We're extremely careful to make sure our updates come out on time and junk free.
That's right, we did no redistribution or modification of their software. Ninite just automates things you would do.
But, publishers can license their software under whatever terms they want. They could forbid this sort of automation in the license, or even forbid Ninite specifically by name. As far as we can tell there's no right to automate your own machine that prohibitions like that would be violating.
I think the only defense here is public backlash (thanks everyone!) and/or boycott.
Sorry for the confusion. That copy is about things like Filehippo Updater, not built-in updaters. The aggregation and automation arguments still apply, but it's not intended as a jab at them.
I'm still confused at how making money destroys our credibility. It's a good thing for the people you trust with software updates to be profitable. Pro users paying us for extra features like remote mode lets us offer Ninite free for everyone else.
We don't even run ads on the free site because Pro users pay the bills and we love that we can save people from wasting time clicking Next Next Next.
First I want to say thanks! We love your work at PortableApps.com and send people there whenever they ask us to add portable software.
Our value is keeping the catalog up-to-date and putting a nice interface around the updating process. Not ad-blocking.
We actively uncheck toolbars for maybe 5 apps. If those apps removed their toolbar offers people would still use Ninite to track updates and automate work.
If publishers want to make updating their software artificially hard there's not a lot we can do except trust that people will see what's going on and move to other products.
Seriously though, we'd lose all our Ninite Pro customers if we pulled any crap with our installations. Since the free version is our marketing department we'd be idiots to mess that up too.
Glad to hear you like it. We think about configuration stuff like this from time to time, but I'm pretty sure getting all the details right would take years. So we haven't made the leap yet.
Basically we automate multiple installers and decline toolbars just like you would.
Users range from the nontechnical to NASA. We even have a huge blind user base because these installers are frequently hell to navigate with a screenreader.
We make money selling a Pro version with extra features to businesses and school IT departments. It works well and aligns us nicely with our users' interests.
Glad to hear you like it. An agent option is something we're thinking about. Right now some people solve this by having a startup script that runs something like: Ninite.exe /silent c:\ninite\report.txt /updateonly /allusers
But an agent would allow us to build some neat management tools too...
All our .exes are signed, app config information comes over https, and downloads are all checked for hashes that match our testing before being automated. We're not just naively adding silent switches either, we'll automate clicks to get through less well-behaved installers when needed.
Why can you trust Ninite? Money. Thousands of businesses pay us for Ninite Pro and the free version is our marketing department. We're extremely careful to make sure our updates come out on time and junk free.