Terminology surrounding shareware

[I've heard a number of developers talk about this at MacHack over the years as well; it's an interesting question of whether or not shareware is at all useful as a term, or specifically what it means. -Adam]

Quoting "Lucas K. Mathis" <tidbitslkmc.ch>:

> I think it depends on whether you want to get down and dirty as a > code warrior. Maybe you see shareware/opensource as a good/free/easy > way to support a small office long term. To me, it is suicide. But > again, YMMV.

I'd be interested in learning why open source solutions would be suicide for your business. I can see how Shareware would be a risk, since the programmer(s) are (possibly) more likely to stop supporting the application than bigger vendors are. But what exactly are the risks when using open source software?

Actually I wonder if the term "shareware" even applies anymore. What is
shareware? I bought BBEdit and Photoshop Elements online with an electronic
deliverable -- are they shareware? Trial versions are available for both. Heck
I can download a trial version of Photoshop.

Kevin

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-- 

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I don't think that a discussion on what "shareware" means is needed in
this context. In the original "shareware is suicide"-quote (which, by
the way, was not from me, even though there have been several mails
putting my name before the quote), the word "shareware" was, at least as
I understood it, used to denote a difference between big commercial
developers (who guarantee a certain amount of security that their
product is here to stay) and smaller one-person-software-shops who may
decide to stop supporting an app whenever they want.

Distribution models had nothing to do with it.

lucas

- --
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away."
  -- Philip K. Dick

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On 3/13/2005 22:50, "Rick Holzgrafe" <rickkagi.com> wrote:

> [I've heard a number of developers talk about this at MacHack over the years
> as well; it's an interesting question of whether or not shareware is at all
> useful as a term, or specifically what it means. -Adam]
>
> And I've heard this discussed on other mailing lists and developer
> get-togethers. Although I've seen some people insist on one strict definition
> or another (often disagreeing with each other), I don't think there's ever
> been a formal definition of the term "shareware."

And none of this is new with "personal computers." In the 1950s, IBM's
scientific machine customers (at least...I don't know whether their business
machine users were involved) created the SHARE organization. That's an
acronym for something...after 50 years I have no idea what.

SHARE did what its name implies...share customer-produced software. They
even produced an OS for the 704/709/7090/7094 family, called SHARE Operating
System (SOS...how creative) as an alternative to FMS (Fortran Monitor System
I think...IBM's way of running the machines).

There was a time when MIT's computation center posted a notice saying
(paraphrased) "we will attempt to run SOS if requested...we don't guarantee
the results".

Wikipedia, somewhat oddly, doesn't seem to know about SHARE (among other
things, it does know about Share, " a Caribbean and Black Canadian community
newspaper based in Toronto, Canada."

  --John

Quoting "Lucas K. Mathis" <tidbitslkmc.ch>:
> I understood it, used to denote a difference between big commercial
> developers (who guarantee a certain amount of security that their
> product is here to stay) and smaller one-person-software-shops who may
> decide to stop supporting an app whenever they want.

Nothing stops a big commercial developer from stopping support when they want.
They don't even have to go out of business.

<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default.mspx>

With the smaller developer they usually a) don't tell you ahead of time
support
is ending, and b) are more likely to stop support because they've gone out of
business.

I do think distribution enters into the original definition since most
shareware
was BBS downloads, then later FTP sites like info-mac
(http://www.info-mac.org/), then web sites. Shareware created electronic
distribution.

Shareware originally was more than just development team size.

Personally I don't think the term has much use these days. I think a
better term
than "shareware" could be coined if all you want to do is reflect the size of
the development team.

On 13 Mar 2005, at 23:50 :39, Rick Holzgrafe wrote:
> [I've heard a number of developers talk about this at MacHack over the
> years as well; it's an interesting question of whether or not
> shareware is at all useful as a term, or specifically what it means.
> -Adam]
>
> And I've heard this discussed on other mailing lists and developer
> get-togethers. Although I've seen some people insist on one strict
> definition or another (often disagreeing with each other), I don't
> think there's ever been a formal definition of the term "shareware."

My definition is shareware is software that is available for use as
fully functional software in which the user is_ asked_ to pay for it
after some preset time.

Crippleware is software that is like shareware, but is limited in
functionality.

Demoware is software that stops functioning at the end of the demo
period (BBEdit is demoware, for example).

( There is a truly evil sub-class, the crippledemo-ware in which not
only does the software expire, but it doesn't work fully until you pay
for it. I don't have an official name for it, though I usually call it
Evilware, trashware, or some other pejorative-ware )

In order to be shareware it needs to be fully functional and
non-expiring. This makes a clear delineation from commercial software
in which payment is required.

There are subsets of shareware:
        donationware: no pre-set price is set, and the user is encouraged to
make a donation, either to the author or to some charity
        emailware: no price is set, user is encouraged to email the author if
using the software

In all cases, the software, whether share/cripple/demo/donation etc
needs to primarily be available electronically and not commercially
(brick and mortar store) (Another thing that excludes products like
BBEdit).

> Nowadays I sell a descendent of the same product, but it needs a
> registration key to turn off the nagging. For some folks, that is what
> pushes it over the line and makes it ineligible to be "shareware."
> Kevin pointed out (see quote below) that this isn't any different from
> many mainstream products such as BBEdit and Photoshop, which few
> people would call "shareware."

If the nag screens do not prevent use (for example, NFS Manager) then
it's still shareware as far as I am concerned.

> Yet another and somewhat more mystical connotation had to do with a
> certain sense of community. There were people who understood
> shareware, who bought into the culture of sharing software and of
> paying for it when they found it useful. I think some folks remember
> that community with longing, and believe that shareware died somewhere
> around the time that that community was drowned in the influx of
> "clueless newbies" to the World Wide Web.

There is something to be said for this. A lot of the newer people on
the Internet (less than 10 years) don't have those same community
instincts, and that is understandable. With the Internet as large as
it is, it can be very difficult to consider it a community, however,
that is a very different discussion.

The trouble is, shareware runs a wide gamut from really poor to
commercial-grade in quality, and unfortunately a lot of those n00bs who
have joined the Internet since AOL started allowing their users out of
the AOL sandbox (yes, I remember the days before AOL users could post
on USENET) see shareware as meaning something along the lines of 'not
worth being a real product.' This is unfair, and wrong. But then a lot
of these people think sending a 4 line email with 1MB of attached
"signature graphics" is perfectly fine (I really wish IncrediMail could
be destroyed), so one must consider the source.

The Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP) defines shareware as software you can TRY on your own computer without any cost or obligation.

In practice, many users have understood shareware to mean software that you can USE on your own computer without any cost or obligation. The later understanding has rendered the term "shareware" largely obsolete since it is no longer clearly distinct from "freeware".

I chose the term "trialware" to convey a fully functional trial period, and that payment was expected to continue using the software beyond the trial period.

"Demoware" suggests the software is a demo but not fully functional in some way.

Finally, some shareware developers have resorted to "nagware" which nags you for payment in some manner without explicitely requiring it.

I wrote "Exposing the Myth of Shareware" way back in 1997 here: http://www.sustworks.com/site/news_exposing_myth.html

Enjoy!

- Peter Sichel