Hi Pascal.
I was dealing the same issue a week before or so, when I finally found some
time to make a full hard-drive backup with Clonezilla, using my Parted Magic
boot CD, but since this distribution is periodically upgraded, I wanted to
burn a new live ISO before I will do the backup.
Unfortunately, the time when I burned my last copy of Parted Magic on a CD,
was also the last time it was offered as a free download. According to a
Phoronix reader, who's been talked with the author, Patrick Verner, the
funding went this way because of the financial problems that occured in the
author's family, when his wife lost job, and he wanted to be able to work on
the project as a full-time job, but for that he needs to meet the $1200 per
month revenue limit, and that wasn't always met through donations.
I encourage you, and everyone here to make the $5 dollar payment for this
perfectly fine distro, full of free software goodness, but if you, for some
reason, are unable to make payments using PayPal (like me), or just want to
test drive the older releases, I found this blog page that helped me, and
where you/anyone can download the latest "free, as in free beer" version,
that was previously released:
http://mrsebe.bplaced.net/blog/wordpress/?p=80
Paying for free software is good thing as long as all the donated money gets
to the project, and I would like to see more of them taking the same route,
since in my opinion, this is the way the majority of free software projects
should go.
The full story about the transition can be found here:
[Phoronix] Parted Magic Is Still Free
