Shareware

Shareware is a type of proprietary software which is provided (initially) free of charge to users, who are allowed and encouraged to make and share copies of the program, which helps to distribute it. Shareware is often offered as a download from an Internet website or as a compact disc included with a magazine.

There are many types of shareware, and while they may not require an initial up-front payment, all are intended to generate revenue in one way or another. Some limit use to personal non-commercial purposes only, with purchase of a license required for use in a business enterprise. The software itself may be limited in functionality or be time-limited. Or it may remind you that payment would be appreciated.

Shareware is available on all major personal computer platforms. Titles cover a very wide range of categories including: business, software development, education, home, multimedia, design, drivers, games, and utilities. Because of its minimal overhead and low cost, the shareware model is often the only one practical for distributing non-free software for abandoned or orphaned platforms such as the Atari ST and Amiga.^[1]

The term shareware is used in contrast to open-source software, in which the source code is available for anyone to inspect and alter, and freeware, which is software distributed at no cost to the user but without source code being made available. Note that two types of shareware, donationware and freemiums, are also types of freeware.

Types of shareware

Adware

Adware, short for "advertising-supported software", is any software package which automatically renders advertisements in order to generate revenue for its author. The advertisements may be in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the user during the installation process. The functions may be designed to analyze which Internet sites the user visits and to present advertising pertinent to the types of goods or services featured there. The term is sometimes used to refer to software that displays unwanted advertisements.

On Microsoft Windows, shareware is often packaged with adware. During the install of the intended software, the user is presented with a requirement to agree to the terms of click through licensing or similar licensing which governs the installation of the software.

Demoware

Demoware is a demonstration version of software. There are generally two types demoware: that which is crippled, and that which has a trial period.

Crippleware

In software, crippleware means that "vital features of the program such as printing or the ability to save files are disabled until the user purchases a registration key". This allows users to take a close look at the features of a program without being able to use it to generate output.

Trialware

Trialware is software with a built-in time limit. The user can try out the program until the trial period is up, and then the program automatically stops working, unless the user pays the license fee and receive a code to enter into the program to turn it into a registered version. Trialware has become the norm for online, Software as a Service (SaaS).

The rationale behind trialware is to give potential users the opportunity to try out the program to judge its usefulness before purchasing a license. According to industry research firm Softletter—66% of online companies surveyed had free-trial-to-paying-customer conversion rates of 25% or less.^[2] Converting free trials to paid customers is one of the key challenges software providers face. SaaS providers employ a wide range of strategies to nurture leads, and convert them into paid customers.

Donationware

Donationware is a licensing model that supplies fully operational unrestricted software to the user and requests an optional donation be paid to the programmer or a third-party beneficiary (usually a non-profit).^[3] The amount of the donation may also be stipulated by the author, or it may be left to the discretion of the user, based on individual perceptions of the software's value. Since donationware comes fully operational (i.e. not crippleware) with payment optional, it is a type of freeware.

Nagware

Nagware is a type of shareware that persistently reminds (nags) the user to register it by paying a fee. It usually does this by popping up a message when the user starts the program, or intermittently while the user is using the application. These messages can appear as windows obscuring part of the screen, or as message boxes that can quickly be closed. Some nagware keeps the message up for a certain time period, forcing the user to wait to continue to use the program.

Some titles display a dialog box with payment information and a message that paying will remove the notice, which is usually displayed either upon startup or after an interval while the application is running. These notices are designed to annoy the user into paying.

Freemium

Freemium works by offering a product or service free of charge (typically digital offerings such as software, content, games, web services or other) while charging a premium for advanced features, functionality, or related products and services. For example, a fully functional feature-limited ("lite") version may be given away for free, with advanced features disabled until a license fee is paid. The word "freemium" is a portmanteau combining the two aspects of the business model: "free" and "premium". It has become a highly popular model, with notable success.

History

In 1982, Andrew Fluegelman created a program for the IBM PC called PC-Talk, a telecommunications program, and used the term freeware; he described it "as an experiment in economics more than altruism".^[4] About the same time, Jim "Button" Knopf released PC-File, a database program, calling it user-supported software.^[5] Not much later, Bob Wallace produced PC-Write, a word processor, and called it shareware. Appearing in an episode of Horizon titled Psychedelic Science originally broadcast 5 April 1998, Bob Wallace said the idea for shareware came to him "to some extent as a result of my psychedelic experience".^[6]

In 1984, Softalk-PC magazine had a column, The Public Library, about such software. Public domain is a misnomer for shareware, and Freeware was trademarked by Fluegelman and could not be used legally by others, and User-Supported Software was too cumbersome. So columnist Nelson Ford had a contest to come up with a better name.

The most popular name submitted was Shareware, which was being used by Wallace. However, Wallace acknowledged that he got the term from an InfoWorld magazine column by that name in the 1970s, and that he considered the name to be generic, so its use became established over freeware and user-supported software.^[7]

Fluegelman, Knopf, and Wallace clearly established shareware as a viable software marketing method. Via the shareware model, Button, Fluegelman and Wallace became millionaires.^[8][9]

Prior to the popularity of the World Wide Web and widespread Internet access, Shareware was often the only economical way for independent software authors to get their product onto users' desktops. Those with Internet or BBS access could download software and distribute it amongst their friends or user groups, who would then be encouraged to send the registration fee to the author, usually via postal mail. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, shareware software was widely distributed over online services, bulletin board systems and on diskettes. Contrary to commercial developers who spent millions of dollars urging users "Don't Copy that Floppy", shareware developers encouraged users to upload the software and share it on disks.

Commercial shareware distributors such as Educorp and Public Domain Inc printed catalogs describing thousands of public domain and shareware programs that were available for a small charge on floppy disk. These companies later made their entire catalog available on CD-ROM. One such distributor, Public Software Library (PSL), began an order-taking service for programmers who otherwise had no means of accepting credit card orders. Later, services like Kagi started offering applications that authors could distribute along with their products that would present the user with an onscreen form to fill out, print, and mail along with their payment. Once telecommunications became more widespread, this service also expanded online. Toward the beginning of the Internet era, books compiling reviews of available shareware were published, sometimes targeting specific niches such as small business. These books would typically come with one or more floppy disks or CD-ROMs containing software from the book.^[10]

As Internet use grew, users turned to downloading shareware programs from FTP or web sites. This spelled the end of bulletin board systems and shareware disk distributors. At first, disk space on a server was hard to come by, so networks like Info-Mac were developed, consisting of non-profit mirror sites hosting large shareware libraries accessible via the web or ftp. With the advent of the commercial web hosting industry, the authors of shareware programs started their own sites where the public could learn about their programs and download the latest versions, and even pay for the software online. This erased one of the chief distinctions of shareware, as it was now most often downloaded from a central "official" location instead of being shared samizdat-style by its users. To ensure users would get the latest bug-fixes as well as an install untainted by viruses or other malware, some authors discouraged users from giving the software to their friends, encouraging them to send a link instead.

Major download sites such as VersionTracker and CNet's Download.com began to rank titles based on quality, feedback, and downloads. Popular software was sorted to the top of the list, along with products whose authors paid for preferred placement. Blogs and online forums further enabled individuals to spread news about titles they like. The popularity of app stores expanded the audience for shareware, as well as providing features for authors to accept payments and provide updates. App stores will typically enforce content guidelines for applications listed on their store.^[11]

Registration

Paying will provide the user with a licence key or pass code they can enter into the software to disable the notices and enable full functionality.

Some pirate web sites publish license codes for popular shareware, leading to a kind of arms race between the developer and the pirates where the developer disables pirated codes and the pirates attempt to find or generate new ones. Some software publishers have started accepting known pirated codes, using the opportunity to educate users on the economics of the shareware model.^[12]

Some shareware relies entirely on the user's honesty and requires no password - simply checking an "I have paid" checkbox in the application is all that is required to disable the registration notices.^[13][14]

Sometimes a more elaborate action is required, such as clicking an obscure area of a window while holding down a modifier key. These tricks were more easily kept secret before the popularity of the Internet. This category of shareware presupposes an educated, involved userbase that is aware of the software development process, and interested in supporting it. A mass audience is more likely to ask the question "Why should I pay for something I already have?" and disable the shareware notice without paying. Some shareware items require no payment; just an email address, so that the supplier can use this address for their own purposes.

Games

In the early 1990s, shareware distribution was a popular method of publishing games for smaller developers, including then-fledgling companies Apogee Software (also known as 3D Realms), Epic Megagames (now Epic Games), Ambrosia Software and id Software. It gave consumers the chance to play the game before investing money in it, and gave them exposure that some products would be unable to get in the retail space.

With the Kroz series, Apogee introduced the "episodic" shareware model that became the most popular incentive for "registering" (or buying) a game. While the shareware game would be a truly complete game, there would be additional "episodes" of the game that were not shareware, and could only be legally obtained by paying for the shareware episode. In some cases these episodes were neatly integrated and would feel like a longer version of the game, and in other cases the later episode(s) would be stand-alone games. Sometimes the additional content was completely integrated with the unregistered game, such as in Ambrosia's Escape Velocity series, in which a character representing the developer's pet parrot, equipped with an undefeatable ship, would periodically harass and destroy the player after they reached a certain level representing the end of the trial period.

Racks of games on single 5 1/4 inch and later 3.5 inch floppy disks were common in retail stores. However, computer shows and bulletin board systems (BBS) such as Software Creations BBS were the primary distributors of low-cost software. Free software from a BBS was the motive force for consumers to purchase a computer equipped with a modem, so as to acquire software at no cost.

The important distinguishing feature between a shareware game and a game demo is that the shareware game is, at least in theory, a complete game. Where modern demos are often a single level or less, shareware games usually had many hours of play with a beginning, middle, and end. Shareware episodes most commonly offered 1/3 or 1/2 of the entire registered version, and many even offered the entire product as shareware with no additional content for registered users.

Criticism

Shareware has been characterized as being both less stable and less secure than "officially developed" software.^[15]

In the 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s, shareware was a means of distribution enabling small developers to have their product widely disseminated among computer users, some of whom would purchase the product. After the internet became popular, the shareware model began to degrade as the term was used by commercial startups offering (sometimes substandard) commercial software and labeling non-functional or limited demo versions (termed crippleware) as shareware. As a result, in the early 21st century, the term shareware was being used less, replaced by either demo or trial software.

Derivatives

Other types of software distribution, taking the suffix "-ware" have followed shareware's lead. They usually do not require the user to make a specific payment to the author. Examples include:

• Postcardware, which requires the user to send a postcard to someone
• Careware, which requires the user to donate to a charity

Another type of shareware software distribution very popular in the mobile domain are app store markets (e.g., see List of mobile software distribution platforms). There, users can often obtain applications that are free and advert banner supported, and often a paid version with no ads and maybe more features.

Industry standards and technologies

There are several widely accepted standards and technologies that are used in the development and promotion of shareware.

• FILE_ID.DIZ is a descriptive text file often included in downloadable shareware distribution packages.
• Portable Application Description (PAD) is used to standardize shareware application descriptions. PAD file is an XML document that describes a shareware or freeware product according to the PAD specification.^[16]
• DynamicPAD extends the Portable Application Description (PAD) standard by allowing shareware vendors to provide customized PAD XML files to each download site or any other PAD-enabled resource. DynamicPAD is a set of server-side PHP scripts distributed under a GPL license and a freeware DynamicPAD builder for 32-bit Windows.
• Code signing is a technology that is used by developers to digitally sign their products. Versions of Microsoft Operating Systems, since Windows XP Service Pack 2 show a warning when the user installs unsigned software. This technology has been seen as part of a tactic to delegitimize independent software development by requiring hefty upfront fees and a review process before software can be distributed.^[17]

See also

• Association of Software Professionals
• Keygen
• List of shareware

References

External links

Look up shareware in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Independent Software Developers Forum (ISDEF)
• Webcast on protecting trialware