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Shareware and Freeware |
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What Is It?
Shareware is a kind of marketing, not a kind of software. Think of it as "try before you buy". You download a copy of the software, install it, and pay for it if you like it. Shareware commonly has some kind of built-in trick to keep you from using forever for free. For instance, some products will cease to function after a set period of time. Others have no expiration date but have a built-in limitation, such as the inability to save files.
Freeware is very much what its name implies; software that's free to use. There are often restrictions on selling or redistributing these products. For an overview of the most common public-domain licensing arrangement, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html.
Who would want to write software for free? The answer can be somewhat complex, but this is as good a summary as any. |
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Products
There are a great many freeware titles available. Here are a few of the more useful. |
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Linux
One of the most commonly used freeware products is not an application, but an operating system. An alternative to Windows, Linux has many ardent fans. Linux exists in a bewildering variety of flavors, called distros (distributions). SUSE, Red Hat, and Mandrake are some of the more common distros. http://www.linux.org/ is a good place to start.You may notice that these vendors are selling Linux, which sounds strange for a freeware product. Typically when you buy Linux, what you're really paying for is support and documentation (although it is perfectly OK to sell it without any of that stuff. Confused yet?). |
OpenOffice This products has nearly all the function of Microsoft Office, and is nearly 100% compatible with it. It is available for download at http://www.openoffice.org/ and runs on all major operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux). |
| The Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program) A very powerful image editing program similar to PhotoShop. See http://www.gimp.org/ for more details. |
Shareware and Freeware Sites
Here's a few of the biggest.
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