Freeware is software , most often proprietary , that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user . There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license , or EULA that defines freeware unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the freeware it offers. For instance, modification , redistribution by third parties, and reverse engineering are permitted by some publishers but prohibited by others. Unlike with free and open-source software , which are also often distributed free of charge, the source code for freeware is typically not made available. Freeware may be intended to benefit its producer by, for example, encouraging sales of a more capable version, as in the freemium and shareware business models .
29-452: The term freeware was coined in 1982 by Andrew Fluegelman , who wanted to sell PC-Talk , the communications application he had created, outside of commercial distribution channels. Fluegelman distributed the program via the same process as shareware . As software types can change, freeware can change into shareware. In the 1980s and 1990s, the term freeware was often applied to software released without source code . Freeware software
58-483: A BBEdit Lite edition which has fewer features. XnView is available free of charge for personal use but must be licensed for commercial use. The "free" version may be advertising supported, as was the case with the DivX . Ad-supported software and registerware also bear resemblances to freeware. Ad-supported software does not ask for payment for a license, but displays advertising to either cover development costs or as
87-410: A donation to the provider)". Some freeware products are released alongside paid versions that either have more features or less restrictive licensing terms. This approach is known as freemium ("free" + "premium"), since the "free" version is intended as a promotion for the premium version. The two often share a code base, using a compiler flag to determine which is produced. For example, BBEdit has
116-866: A law firm in San Francisco . He was admitted to the State Bar of California in January 1971. He resigned in 1972 without any particular plan about his future. The following year, Fluegelman started working for the Whole Earth Catalog , a job that lasted for about a year. During that time, he separated from his wife and starting living in Sausalito, California . At one point, he fasted for 49 days, drinking only water. He started writing and publishing books, such as San Francisco Free and Easy and The New Games Book . In 1981, Fluegelman
145-912: A limited evaluation period, after which the software is automatically disabled or starts displaying a request to pay a registration fee. In the latter case it is colloquially known as nagware. The Creative Commons offer licenses , applicable to all by copyright governed works including software, which allow a developer to define "freeware" in a legal safe and internationally law domains respecting way. The typical freeware use case "share" can be further refined with Creative Commons restriction clauses like non-commerciality ( CC BY-NC ) or no- derivatives ( CC BY-ND ), see description of licenses . There are several usage examples , for instance The White Chamber , Mari0 or Assault Cube , all freeware by being CC BY-NC-SA licensed with only non-commercial sharing allowed. Freeware cannot economically rely on commercial promotion. In May 2015 advertising freeware on Google AdWords
174-467: A means of income. Registerware forces the user to subscribe with the publisher before being able to use the product. While commercial products may require registration to ensure licensed use , registerware do not. Shareware permits redistribution, but the license only allows limited use before paying the license fee. Some features may be disabled prior to payment, in which case it is sometimes known as crippleware. Both freeware and shareware sometimes have
203-490: A non-profit educational publisher that released works under an -NC license, sued FedEx for violating the license because a school had used its services to mass-produce photocopies of the work, thus commercially exploiting the works. A U.S. judge dismissed the case in February 2017, ruling that FedEx was an intermediary, and that the provision of the license "does not limit a licensee's ability to use third parties in exercising
232-582: A price. According to the Free Software Foundation (FSF), "freeware" is a loosely defined category and it has no clear accepted definition, although FSF asks that free software (libre; unrestricted and with source code available) should not be called freeware. In contrast the Oxford English Dictionary simply characterizes freeware as being "available free of charge (sometimes with the suggestion that users should make
261-404: A single entity to be responsible for updating and enhancing the product, which is then given away without charge. Other freeware projects are simply released as one-off programs with no promise or expectation of further development. These may include source code , as does free software, so that users can make any required or desired changes themselves, but this code remains subject to the license of
290-514: A very popular and successful communications program. He marketed it under a system he called " Freeware ", which he characterized as "an experiment in economics more than altruism ". Freeware was licensed under terms that encouraged users to make voluntary payments for the software, and it allowed users to copy and redistribute the software freely as long as the license terms and text were not altered. He collaborated with PC-File (database software) developer Jim Knopf to adopt similar names (PC-File
319-566: Is a Creative Commons license which a copyright holder can apply to their media to give public permission for anyone to reuse that media only for noncommercial activities. Creative Commons is an organization which develops a variety of public copyright licenses , and the "noncommercial" licenses are a subset of these. Unlike the CC0 , CC BY , and CC BY-SA licenses, the CC BY-NC license is considered non-free. A challenge with using these licenses
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#1732786711834348-427: Is available for use without charge and typically has limited functionality with a more capable version available commercially or as shareware. It is typically fully functional for an unlimited period of time. In contrast to what the Free Software Foundation calls free software , the author of freeware usually restricts the rights of the user to use, copy, distribute, modify, make derivative works, or reverse engineer
377-447: Is determining what noncommercial use is. In September 2009 Creative Commons published a report titled, "Defining 'Noncommercial'". The report featured survey data, analysis, and expert opinions on what "noncommercial" means, how it applied to contemporary media, and how people who share media interpret the term. The report found that in some aspects there was public agreement on the meaning of "noncommercial", but for other aspects, there
406-509: Is software where "the Government does not have access to the original source code". The "free" in "freeware" refers to the price of the software, which is typically proprietary and distributed without source code. By contrast, the "free" in "free software" refers to freedoms granted users under the software license (for example, to run the program for any purpose, modify and redistribute the program to others), and such software may be sold at
435-490: Is wide variation in expectation of what the term means. The Conference on College Composition and Communication commented that creators and re-users have their own biases and tend to interpret "noncommercial" in a way that favors their own use. Online magazine repeated the report's claim that two-thirds of Creative Commons usage was with noncommercial licenses and that there was public confusion about how people should reuse such content. Various bloggers commented that
464-474: The ambiguity which the report exposed provided supporting evidence of the need to establish clarification and certainty into what it means to apply the license and reuse media under the license. An examination of media use in biodiversity research publications reported that people both offering and reusing biodiversity media with the noncommercial license have a variety of conflicting understandings about what this should mean. Erik Möller raised concerns about
493-1617: The books were designed by Howard Jacobsen and produced by his company, Community Type and Design. This list is arranged by year of book publication: Edited by Andrew Fluegelman and Shoshana Tembeck. A Headlands Press Book, Dolphin/Doubleday (1976). ISBN 0-385-12516-X By Meisch, Lynn. A Headlands Press Book. Publisher: Penguin Books New York (1977). ISBN 0-14-046280-5 By Norman Locks. A Headlands Press Book. HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS, San Francisco (1978). ISBN 0-06-250530-0 By Diane Sward Rapaport. A Headlands Press Book. Putnam, Prentice-Hall (1979). ISBN 0-8256-9932-0 By Frank Barrett; Lynn Barrett. Publisher: New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston (1980). ISBN 0-03-056958-3 By Jeremy Joan Hewes. The Headlands Press, Inc., San Francisco. Doubleday (1981). ISBN 0-385-15995-1 By The New Games Foundation. Main Street Books New York: Dolphin Books/Doubleday & Company (1981). ISBN 0-385-17514-0 By Mia Detrick, Illustrated by Kathryn Kleinman A Headlands Press Book. Chronicle Books LLC (1983) ISBN 0-87701-238-5 By Andrew Fluegelman and Jeremy Joan Hewes. Anchor Press/Doubleday Publishing Group (1983) ISBN 0-385-18125-6 By Kay Hamblin. The Doubleday Publishing Group (1978) ISBN 0-385-14246-3 CC BY-NC A Creative Commons NonCommercial license ( CC NC , CC BY-NC or NC license )
522-688: The compiled executable and does not constitute free software. A "free" trial is another related concept in which customers are allowed to use a product, free of charge, for a limited time. When a software monopoly has a strong network effect, it may be more profitable for it to offer a "free" trial. Also, customers acquired via a "free" trial have a much lower customer lifetime value as opposed to regular customers, but they also respond more to marketing communications . Some factors that may encourage or discourage people to use "free" trials include: Andrew Fluegelman Andrew Cardozo Fluegelman (November 27, 1943 – c. July 6, 1985)
551-461: The condition. Within a few days of beginning to take the medication, he became depressed and agitated. He started profusely apologizing to his colleague for perceived failures. In order to reduce his stress, his employer rearranged his work schedule; Fluegelman's behavior did not improve. On the afternoon of July 6, 1985, he left his office in Tiburon, California . A week later, his abandoned car
580-442: The contrary, licensees may use third‐party agents such as commercial reproduction services in furtherance of their own permitted noncommercial uses. Because FedEx acted as the mere agent of licensee school districts when it reproduced Great Minds' materials, and because there is no dispute that the school districts themselves sought to use Great Minds' materials for permissible purposes, we conclude that FedEx's activities did not breach
609-469: The current copyright regime also harms compatibility and that authors can lessen this incompatibility by choosing the least restrictive license. Additionally, the non-commercial license is useful for preventing someone else from capitalizing on an author's work when the author still plans to do so in the future. The non-commercial licenses have also been criticized for being too vague about which uses count as "commercial" and "non-commercial". Great Minds,
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#1732786711834638-626: The rights granted [by the licensor]." Great Minds appealed the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit later that year. The 2nd Circuit upheld the lower court's decision in March 2018, concluding that FedEx neither infringed copyrights nor violated the license. One of circuit judges Susan L. Carney argued in the court statement: We hold that, in view of the absence of any clear license language to
667-574: The software. The software license may impose additional usage restrictions; for instance, the license may be "free for private, non-commercial use" only, or usage over a network, on a server, or in combination with certain other software packages may be prohibited. Restrictions may be required by license or enforced by the software itself; e.g., the package may fail to function over a network. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) defines "open source software" (i.e., free software or free and open-source software), as distinct from "freeware" or "shareware"; it
696-561: The use of Creative Commons' non-commercial license. Works distributed under the Creative Commons Non-Commercial license are not compatible with many open-content sites, including Misplaced Pages, which explicitly allow and encourage some commercial uses. Möller explained that "the people who are likely to be hurt by an -NC license are not large corporations, but small publications like weblogs, advertising-funded radio stations, or local newspapers." Lessig responded that
725-677: Was a publisher, photographer, programmer and attorney best known as a pioneer of what is now known as the shareware business model for software marketing. He was also the founding editor of both PC World and Macworld and the leader of the 1970s New Games movement, which advocated the development of noncompetitive games . Fluegelman was raised in White Plains, New York . He graduated from Yale University in 1969. Following graduation, Fluegelman worked in Midtown Manhattan before moving to California and working for
754-657: Was found at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge near San Francisco. His family held a memorial service for Fluegelman, and he is presumed dead , though his body has never been found. Kevin Strehlo, then an InfoWorld columnist, submitted a memorial column which mentioned that "friends say a suicide note was found inside" his car. InfoWorld rejected this column, but an online news service published it. The Headlands Press produced books and negotiated publishing contracts for them with major publishers. Many of
783-420: Was originally "Easy-File"), and prices, for their initial shareware offerings; they also agreed to mention each other's products in their program's documentation. Fluegelman edited PC World magazine from its introduction in 1982 until 1985, and Macworld magazine from its introduction in 1984 until 1985. Fluegelman suffered from ulcerative colitis . In July 1985, he was prescribed prednisone to treat
812-508: Was restricted to "authoritative source"[s]. Thus web sites and blogs are the primary resource for information on which freeware is available, useful, and is not malware . However, there are also many computer magazines or newspapers that provide ratings for freeware and include compact discs or other storage media containing freeware. Freeware is also often bundled with other products such as digital cameras or scanners . Freeware has been criticized as "unsustainable" because it requires
841-678: Was the owner and sole employee of The Headlands Press, a small book publisher in Tiburon, California . He had attended an early computer expo in San Francisco in the late 1970s, and after agreeing to publish and coauthor Writing in the Computer Age decided to purchase his first computer. In October, Fluegelman bought one of the first IBM PCs sold in San Francisco, and in two weeks began to write his own accounting program in IBM BASIC . In late 1982 Fluegelman developed PC-Talk ,
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