What you don’t know about freeware and free software
Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes
Have you ever downloaded any software from the internet that cost you nothing? If you answered yes to this question, then you might have probably downloaded either a freeware or a free software but how will you know?
A software that is declared “free to use” may have full functional capabilities while some other software can likewise be used and modified.
The term freeware refers to a computer software that is available for an unlimited time of use at no cost or for an optional fee. Example of which are those software available online for free downloading but the publisher or developer may be able to accept donations (donationware) voluntarily from the user or downloader in place of a newsletter, alerts on software update, or in support to the product itself which is contrary to shareware (a software-type that is of limited use for trial versions and normally requires a license to be fully functional in exchange of a one-time fee or subscription).
Freeware allows authors to contribute something to the society, retains the code source and track the software’s future development potential.
An important distinction should be made, depending on how the software is used and on vendor policies. Usage of the software for commercial use, personal, and educational is to be considered. Personal use refers to product usage that is non-income generating, commercial use is likewise the opposite while a special case called educational use refers to the ways the software is utilized in the academe.
In some cases, software vendors give discounts for educational use to generate revenue for the software’s distributor and at times consider education use being commercial. This is because most software vendors make an application freeware for personal use and at the same time require a fee to be paid for commercial use. That is why some freeware may contain adware, also known as adware supported freeware programs or advertising-supported software.
A free software, otherwise known as software libre, refer to software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware manufacturers from preventing user modifications.
In order to distribute a software as free software, the human-readable form of the program (the source code) must be made available to the recipient along with a notice granting the free software permissions. This notice is a “free software license“, or a notice saying that the source code is released into the public domain.
Therefore, a free software may be used at no cost for both personal and commercial purposes. However, if a person or company creates a derived software product by modifying the original source code and wishes to distribute the result, it must be done under the same free software terms, including the source code modifications.
Having stated all of these, you definitely know the difference between a freeware and a free software. So the next time you do your search for a free software download on the internet, you know exactly what you’re looking for.
Based on current trends, a freeware with full functionality is a rare—find. Some features are not available or is missing on the freeware version advising a user to purchase a licensed commercial version of the freeware.
Some freeware can be potentially harmful to your computer so be careful in choosing the freeware you want to download. While a free software is free, it’s always hard to find. But there’s always a reward for those who value patience.
Category: software
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