Today, all software for computer and mobile systems, called software (from English software), can very conditionally be divided into paid and free. Let's try to consider what are freeware, licensed and shareware programs. In addition, we give an explanation about the differences between such software and the appropriateness of using this or that type of software products.
What programs are called freeware?
About this type of software, it’s worth mentioning right away that the condition of having a license for a particular product is not mandatory. For example, licensed applications, as well as those developed by enthusiasts of their field (semi-professionals, students, etc.), belong to freely distributed programs.
Thus, among all that is offered on the market of computer and mobile software today, three large categories can be singled out separately:
- publicly available programs;
- freeware applications (freeware);
- open source software.
Varieties of Free Software
What programs are called freeware is already a little clear. But here there are some nuances.
Public software, from the point of view of legislative acts, is not protected by copyright. In this case, only the fact of alienation of the rights to the product from the author and their classification as the public domain when the rights are common property is indicated. A striking example is some of the Internet standards (HTML, TCP / IP, etc.). However, they may or may not have open source. But in any case, such freely distributed programs for Windows, for example, can be modified, modified, used to develop new software, or simply distribute them without any restrictions.
For the second type of software products, copyright is reserved for the developer, and their use, as a rule, is limited by truncated capabilities, as well as terms of non-commercial use. For freeware-programs, as is already clear, any change of them without the consent of the author is impossible or even illegal, although there is no need to pay for their use. In addition, the developer, as a rule, constantly monitors the use and distribution of his software product, and in some cases can even transfer it to the status of shareware, which implies a limitation in functionality or free use for a certain period.
Finally, another look at freeware. Examples of such software would be incomplete if the issue of open source software was not addressed. What does this mean in the simplest sense? It’s just that the developer grants users unlimited rights to launch the application for any purpose, change and modify it with the subsequent transfer of its original or modified copy to third parties, etc. In terms of freedom of action, its level is much higher than for other freeware products for which basically the concept of free distribution includes only the ability to create a copy and use it for your own needs.
Criteria and definition of free software
Speaking about which programs are called freely distributed, one cannot but touch upon the issue of so-called freedoms, which is regulated by the rules of the General Public License (licenses will be discussed separately).
Back in the 70s of the last century R. Stolman formulated the basic concepts of freedom, as applied to software products:
- "Zero freedom" - the use of software for any purpose without restrictions;
- “First freedom” - the opportunity to study the work of the program and its adaptation to your needs;
- “Second freedom” - free distribution of copies of the application;
- "Third freedom" - the ability to change or improve the program, followed by publicly available publication.
As can be seen from the above criteria, for the "first" and "third freedom" one of the prerequisites is the presence of the very open source code, the concept of which, incidentally, was introduced somewhat later by E. Raymond. In general, based on these principles, by and large, free programs and applications can only be called those that meet all four criteria.
Types of Free Licenses
Not to mention the main license, today you can find quite a lot of other legislative acts regulating this area of ​​activity.
However, as a rule, the most common and most used free license is the GNU GPL of different versions. In addition, there are also varieties such as MIT and BSD. The main advantage of such software is precisely that it can be used at home, at schools and universities, or in any other organizations.
Free software: examples
If you start listing all that can be attributed to free software partially or completely, it may take too much time, and you can find quite a lot of software products themselves.
However, among all that users use most often, one can note various kinds of multimedia, Internet technologies, some computing tools, and even whole office suites (Oracle OpenOffice). Licensed programs do not have open source code, but some applications can be easily changed. Even the developers themselves initially agree to the modification of their software products by users in order to improve functionality or fix bugs.
Features of licensed applications
Among free software, licensed programs are worth mentioning separately. As stated above, they are protected by copyright and usage agreements.
But many of us are faced with such things almost every day. Surely, many saw that when installing some programs at one of the first stages of installation, a window appears in which the text of the license agreement is displayed , and if you do not put a checkmark in front of the consent line with all the items below, the installation will simply not continue. Unfortunately, the vast majority of users consider this to be pure formality or convention and never read the text itself. But in vain. It would not hurt many to know what it was all about.
The license, by the way, implies that this software will absolutely work on equipment or in the configuration declared by the developer, which cannot be said about other free products, no matter how attractive they look.
Some varieties of paid applications
Finally, we turn to paid applications. All categories will not be considered. We are interested in shareware and trial shareware types.
In most cases, they can be downloaded and installed for free. As a rule, such programs can have full functionality or limited capabilities that can be used for a certain period of time (usually 30 days). But after this, the application may stop working, because it will need to be either registered as an official copy or purchased.
The first case is simple. It is enough just to go through a simple registration on the developer's website, sometimes confirmation by e-mail may be required, but if this is a demo version, you will have to buy the full one. In the second case, you also have to pay. However, this has never stopped our user (and not only).
Can I get around the restrictions when using paid programs?
Today in the computer Internet space there are quite a lot of groups of enthusiasts who are involved, to put it mildly, illegal actions - hacking programs. And, from the point of view of international law, all those who install or use such copies can also be classified as cybercriminals (at least, accomplices - that’s for sure).
Therefore, when it is proposed to use someone else's license keys, password generators (KeyGen.exe), patch (Patch.exe) or something else to circumvent registration, you should think about the legality of such actions a hundred times. No, of course, international organizations involved in countering cybercrime will not be able to track all users (they simply do not have enough time or resources for this), however, the fact of using hacked software products is already a direct offense.
Conclusion
It is hoped that many have already understood what programs are called freely distributed and what criteria they meet. Among the majority of users, by the way, there is an erroneous opinion that free software is less functional compared to paid software products. Nothing like this. Some licensed and freely distributed programs created by enthusiasts and / or often open source sometimes not only yield to paid analogues of well-known developers, but even surpass them (the same OpenOffice, which many users consider a much more interesting package than a paid analog from Microsoft )