Removal of PAD files...

[Moonchild]

After quite some time of maintaining PAD (Portable Application Description) files on the website for easy distribution of metadata about Pale Moon to software portals, it's unfortunately come to the point where it doesn't look like the ASP is ever going to back down from their power grab. As such, we will no longer make PAD files available on the website, and will no longer offer this metadata in an automatically parsable format.

What happened?

The PAD format was thought up and published by the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). It is an XML-based format that specifies a standard for software metadata.
Up to and including 3.11 of the format (which has been the version we've been carrying thus far), PAD files would be placed on the website of the software author/vendor to make available to distribution channels. This allowed an easy update and independent distribution of this metadata to software portals, aggregators and end users.
Great idea, and easy to implement.

Then, with v4 of the PAD specification, the ASP made a power grab, and demanded that software authors/vendors stop using local files, and instead use a central registry of metadata on ASP servers, with the ASP in sole control of which software would be published, and the power to discriminate and squelch any author, vendor or piece of software they would so wish. Considering the shareware market where this directly impacts developers' incomes, this one-sided control was a dirty way of applying leverage. ASP may own the spec, but they don't own the PADs or have a right to play arbiter over independent software developers.
In addition it would require central registration and the use of a clumsy web application to painstakingly, one title at a time, update software in their registry; on top of that there has been a bad design flaw where you'd have to update binaries first, then go update the metadata. Old binaries, if found missing (or an update creating a mismatch in size), could automatically de-list your software as a result, requiring re-registration and re-entry of data, and more similar headaches.
This was unacceptable for us, and after a brief period of inspecting the new system, we reverted to v3.11 of the spec.

Unfortunately, this spec has not been updated since (a few years now), and new features, operating systems, etc. are no longer part of it. As such it's falling rapidly in disuse, and PAD sites are generally folding as a result as well, since they no longer have an advantage over the ASP site itself (they are forced to query the registry for software titles). A good idea stomped into the dirt by an association lusting for power. A real pity.

If you previously relied on PAD files for mirroring our binaries, then we're sorry -- it'll have to be done manually from this point forward.