Port Authority — A GUI for DarwinPorts

DarwinPorts is a project devoted to porting and cataloguing ports of Unix software for Darwin-based OS’s (like Mac OS X). Port Authority, until its version 1.0 release in June 2006, was a free Aqua-based GUI that greatly reduced the complexity of taking advantage of DarwinPorts. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t get around to trying this until today, when I discovered that the Aqua version is no longer available for a free trial. Instead, you can pay $6.25 (what an odd amount!) for the privilege of downloading it, or use the still-free X11 version. Since I’ve had it around for over 6 months and didn’t miss using it, I guess I can do without it for now. I’ll never pay anything for software I can’t try out, and I had trouble getting the X11 version to launch. If the author reinstitutes a trial version at some point, and I find it useful, I’m sure I’d be happy to pay $6.25 for it.