Shareware, Freeware, and Software Piracy

Commercial software is normally acquired by paying for the product before you try it out, and you are stuck with your purchase even if it doesn't do what you had been told it would, thought it would, believed it would, or been led to believe it would.

Because so many people steal software from their work, or unlawfully receive it as a "gift" from a work colleague or a friend or relative, there is very little real profit to those who package and sell it. Consequently world-wide, software sellers, vendors or distributors usually refuse to refund money paid for software purchased unless it can be shown that the particular item is faulty. They will then replace the product with a known to be working copy. This is because of the appallingly dishonest assumption by so many computer owners that it does not matter if they use software they have not bought - even using it for earning a living. That stealing of somebody else's property is called "Software Piracy".

So, you may ask, is there any way you can try software out first, and when you are satisfied that it will work, then buy it?

The answer to that question is really a double barrelled one, a two-edged sword if you like, both "yes" and "no".

About 1990 I remember reading an article in a computer magazine. It described the efforts of a lecturer in a teaching institution who decided to approach the subject of piracy from a new angle, because of the rejection by all of the class of the concept that intellectual property has value. They all insisted that it should be shared freely among all who wanted access to it.

He gave his class of mature aged students an assignment to write some code to perform a reasonably simple task, with a requirement that they all bring their assignment and discuss it with the rest of the class. A prize was promised for the best efforts.

The students soon discovered that it took much longer to produce this code than they originally thought, and several of them spent many nights up late writing, checking, and rewriting their code.

The day came for the assignments to be turned in, and the writers of the best solutions were invited to explain why and how they had gone about the work they had done. All confessed that it took until 3 in the morning some nights and were pleased that they had found the answers that others had not.

The lecturer then gathered all their work up and distributed it to the other members of the class who had failed to solve the problem. The outcry from the authors of the software was tremendous; they pointed out that it was totally unfair that the others should have the work that they had spent so many hours on, they should have the reward for producing it themselves.

The lecturer then reminded them that this was in contradiction with their previously stated views on the need for all software to be freely available to everybody. The matter of piracy was never again brought up by the lecturer because he knew that the students had discovered the value of their work...

Freeware is software which you can use permanently without paying anything for it.

Shareware is software which you can obtain free - or at the cost of the recording media and postage or other distribution cost - and you have a fixed period of time in which you can evaluate it before you are required to either pay for it, or remove it from your computer. Generally speaking, the cost of a Shareware product is considerably less than its equivalent commercially sold product.

The conditions under which Shareware products can be evaluated vary.

The earliest was an honour system which unfortunately those who had no intention of honouring just ignored.

Sometimes after a prolongued trial period there would be lengthy delays in the program running from the time you clicked on it. In other cases there would be a "bomb" inside it, which would turn it into a pumpkin at the end of the prescribed period. This could often be circumvented by the date being reset.

In other cases, the program would actually uninstall itself.

Such measures merely indicate the dishonest approach by a very large number of computer users, who frankly cannot be trusted. They have no "honour".

There is another variety which is a combination of Shareware and Freeware. Some features of the product become disabled after the evaluation period's expiry.