What is shareware?
Written by thalib on April 25th, 2010Shareware is another type of software. It is a software that is ready to download from Internet for a free trial. After the free trial you cannot use the software unless you purchase it. This is because at the end of the trial period you is bound by the electronic user license agreement (EULA) to either uninstall the software, or pay for its continued use. Even you did not uninstall it, you still cannot use the software.
The shareware trial periods is vary from a few days to a month, look at the product description or in the EULA. For some software, especially games, it has a trial period based on the number of times the program was opened, rather than the number of days it has been installed on your computer. For example, if a shareware software has an evaluation plan that allows 30 uses, the software will continue to work until it has been executed 30 times.
To protect author’s copyright, the author normally put a built-in mechanisms to check whether the trial period has over or not. So when the user wants to open the program, an error box or popup screen will appear to inform you that the trial period has ended and ask you to purchase and get the registration key. The payment can be made by credit card or other method like paypal.
The only different between shareware and freeware is that the user agrees to uninstall or pay for shareware at some point. Freeware does not require payment.
Tags: Shareware