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by Jolo, last updated Aug 17, 2004
What is "shareware"? Compared to the typical commercial software system, shareware is an unusal way of distributing software which can benefit both the author of the software and the consumer (that's you!).
Most people know about the woes of commercial software, but let's recap quickly. You pay a hefty price up front, usually without ever having seen the product in action, plus most of the money goes toward defraying the company's advertising or other overhead costs. You seldom have money-back guarantees, even if the software is completely inappropriate for your needs or if you just plain hate it. You supposedly get professional customer support, which means waiting on hold for half an hour just to talk to some technician who had nothing to do with writing the program. It's not always so bad, and in fact some products are really well supported, but you get my point.
Shareware is completely free to download, often from many different sites on the net without waiting or going to a store. You get to try it out for free for a trial period such as 30 days, then if you still like it and want to continue using it, you are bound by an honor system to "register" the product. This means paying a modest shareware fee, typically less than US$20 and certainly cheaper than any software in a store. The fee goes to the author, a normal individual just like you and me who happens to write shareware for fun and to make some money, not some mega-corporation.
Very rarely can a shareware author make much money, because the fee is so low and many people are not honorable. So typically shareware includes simple little programs like games, utilities, screensavers, etc. There are exceptions, though. For example, the best and most complicated Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client programs (including mIRC for Windows and Ircle and Snak for Mac OS) are all shareware.
First and foremost, you should pay in order to "do the right thing". In the long term, you encourage the author to keep producing low-cost, high-quality software. In the short term, you encourage the author to continue to support that program you are using: to fix bugs, add new features, write help files, and answer email questions. You may think, "He won't notice if one starving student like me doesn't send in my $20." Well if everybody thinks like that, next thing you know, the author doesn't get paid enough and abandons the project. If shareware as a concept dies, we'd all be stuck with Microsoft and its "innovations" - is that what you really want?
Some authors try to nudge you to do the right thing. For example, until you do pay, you get periodic reminder dialogs ("nagware"), some features are disabled ("crippleware"), the program quits after a while each time you use it ("quitware"), or maybe it just stops working after 30 days ("bombware"). We all dislike these tactics, but studies prove that they are effective in encouraging more people to pay. Oh well, pay on time and you won't have to worry about it. There are also some humorous variations on nagging such as "careware" which requests you send money to the author's choice of charity, "postcardware" where they want a postcard from where you live, or "beerware" - well you can figure that one out.
These are just some of the many sites where you can find a wide range of freeware or shareware. Be careful about downloading blindly from other sites because what may look like exciting shareware could instead be a Trojan horse attack which could seriously compromise your security.