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Freeware

In the software development movement, it begins with freeware because it was all developed by government. However due to the War time security reason it was not free to the public. After the WWII, European and American started the computer movement. The software development became privatized so it became another merchandize that you have to purchase.

With the perforation of Unix, the freeware was coming back but not in the mainstream until Linux. (Note Java is not a freeware, it is always a licensed software from Sun.) Unix has a lot of research grant from government, so it should be free. Yet commercialization of it makes it not free.

This section will be devoted to some of the pitfalls and joy of using freeware from enterprise and personal perspective. Many issues are well known within the software community. I tried to outline some of them to allow outsider to have a glimpse on the complexity. For insider, they may not even have some thought came across their mind.

There are tremendous amount of law involved. The interpretation of issue has no clean cut due to the variation of law among countries. Ignoring the differences between countries, the issues spread over the domain of patent, intellectual property right, indemnity,  copyright and ownership. I am no lawyer. I hope my interpretation could lead to no legal trouble. I am choosing the reasonable approach but not necessarily legal or politically correct.

Freeware Catalogue

Latest articles and comments:

•  2007.05.16 Microsoft sues Red Hat for software patent infringement, reported by CNN on May 14, 2007, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/. While this will be a long a winding process to the final verdict, this is the reality for freeware user who should aware such legal entanglement. In an application, development cost should include the coding and design, and testing, as well as the less accounted for support and sales. The coding could be as small as 10%. People usually overstates the benefit of software by consistently emphasis the zero cost which is not true.
•  2006.07.25 Open Source success factors
•  What is freeware 2005.08.28

Coming soon ....

•  Do you know Microsoft is the biggest freeware supplier?
•  Does freeware really free?

Please send email to ck_wong@ieee.org with questions or comments about this web site. Copyrighted © 2005 - 2011 In CK's Opinion Last modified: 12/17/11.