A friend of mine writes shareware and makes very good money - but not from registration fees. He identifies niche markets with a dominant vendor, then writes fully functional utilities that compete with the commercial products and makes them available very cheaply, sometimes as freeware, to the users.
It usually only takes a few months before he sells the code to the vendor, usually along with a non-compete agreement covering the market segment. He’s done this a half dozen times now and is doing very well financially.
This is a great idea! It almost smacks of extortion, but as long as the company doesn’t have a patent on the ideas in the program, I don’t see a problem with it, especially if your friend can make a better product. I love it.
Not really any more, unless you mean honour not to look up cracks and serial numbers.
A great deal of shareware just isn’t fully functional, or is time limited, these days. “Nagware” and similar are getting less and less.
Many developers seem to be dramatically increasing the complexity of the registration process. Rather than put in a name and number that could be stolen off a warez site, they have key-gen systems so you have to send them a unique code generated by your computer and then will then email back a registration code after payment. (The latest Photoshop does something like that, admittedly that is hardly shareware).
Other companies only allow you to download demos - they are not even unlockable. To get the full version, you have to pay, and then get a (presumably time/session limited?) password to a server to download the full version. Quite a few of my Palm games worked this way.
So in answer to the OP, there are certainly some developers making a full time living, but my impression is they are a minority. I’ve noticed a lot of small shareware developers seem to be college students and even high school kids. Quite a nice hobby if you are talented enough.
My best experience was paying for something that was total honourware (you could click “I’ve paid!” even if you hadn’t). When I paid, I mentioned a feature that would be really cool in future versions. Overnight, the developer emailed me a new version with that feature in.
I know my Fortune 1000 employer licenses at least two shareware applications.
We license Winzip and [Satan’s application follows, cross yourself] Realplayer.
We have in excess of 10,000 worldwide employees, so I’d imagine we’re paying at least one developer’s salary at each of those firms.
One of my coworkers was able to walk out of the office when management pissed him off, due to the money his shareware products are bringing in. He gets a steady income each month from the programs, so he could afford to take some time off from work.
Perhaps, but when I was writing stuff there was probably an equal measure of crippleware vs. nagware and complete honor system. It’s probably leaned more towards the former because it’s really the only way to get those fence-sitters (those who are neither dishonorable nor in any hurry to pay up) to come down on one side or the other.
Photoshop is a little different though. In addition to a registration key it also requires activation, much like Windows and Office XP and other big ticket apps do. The key gets it installed; the activation is usually automated over the Internet and requires no interactivity from the user. It does have the option to activate by phone though, which will require you to rattle off a unique ID to the Adobe person, who will then generate an activation code from it and rattle it off to you.
My shareware registration process was a little like that I suppose. A unique ID was generated at install and encrypted into the data package. In order to register payment had to be made and that ID supplied with payment, the registration code for which would be E-Mailed back to the customer. I perferred this method because it was simple (well, the routines themselves to decrypt the ID and generate the reg code weren’t) and let me track legitemate, paid users for support versus those who just E-Mailed me about a feature that was locked in the shareware version yet didn’t appear on my list of registered users.
Yep, although I don’t think this is any more common on the Palm platform than on PC. The vast majority of stuff on PalmGear, for example, is still just your basic serial-generated-from-hotsync-name (or increasingly common, from device ID). In fact the only game I came across in recent months whose shareware version was physically missing half the game was Astraware’s Broken Sword. Given the size of the game though I can sort of understand why.
I’ve had similar experiences a few times and it’s quite nice to get that kind of support – that alone makes the reg fee worthwhile in many cases.
As a long-time shareware author (although I don’t make a living off of it), I feel compelled to point out that in current usage the term “shareware” really refers more to the distribution method than anything else. In the very early days, “shareware” meant “pay for it if you like it”, more or less. Unfortunately, this idea that if something is called “shareware” it means that you are not legally bound to purchase it if you use it has persisted. There is NO legal difference between a commercial product such as Photoshop and a program that is called shareware. You are NOT legally entitled to use a “shareware” program without paying for it, unless the author has explicitely stated that it is free. The difference is mostly that shareware is distributed more via the internet or compilation CDs. And because the authors typically cannot afford advertising, the inducement for people to try the product is that it has some sort of free trial period. But make no mistake: If you continue to use it beyond the author’s stated trial period without purchasing it, you are breaking the law, pure and simple.
It’s exactly because of this misunderstanding about the term “shareware” that I long ago stopped using that word in anything related to my software. Where I used to say “This program is shareware; if you continue to use it you must purchase a license”, I now say “The purchase price of this program is us$45; you may use it for up to 30 days for evaluation purposes.” And in the actual license, I state it even more strongly. I hope that that helps to prevent people from thinking that they can just use it if they want, but it certainly makes the legal standing unambiguous.
In the case of WinZip, I believe it is NOT, in fact, free. You are being taken in by the first couple of sites that come up when you google for it: they indicate that the DOWNLOAD of WinZip is free, not the program itself. In other words, those sites are “generously” not charging you for the privilege of downloading the program. But take a look at the license on the actual WinZip site: www.winzip.com/elicense.htm. It very clearly states under “Scope of License” that “this is not free software”. If you use it for more than 45 days, you are breaking the law. The fact that the WinZip authors chose to make it pretty easy to do that is irrelevant. (Note, also, that it appears that the authors of WinZip don’t refer to it as “shareware”, either).
I have paid for quite a few shareware programs over the years, whether they were nagware or fully functional. If I like it enough to keep using it, I pay for it.
Back in the days Roadfood was talking about, I released a game I had written as shareware. It had no restrictions or limitations whatsoever–just a splash screen when it started up saying “if you like it, send money,” and instructions on how to do so. Last time I checked, it had been downloaded about 4,000 times. I received about a dozen emails telling me how good the game is (including one describing how “everyone” in his office of over 50 people was playing it). I got two or three bug reports, and one email asking for the source code. In all that time, guess how many people paid for it? TWO. That’s right. Two out of 4,000 sent in the money.
Maybe I’d do it again today with limitations, special features that only worked in the registered version, time bombs, or whatever, but counting on honesty with a shareware game was a dismal experiment. Roughly 0.05% of the people were willing to pay for something if they weren’t forced. Pah. So much for human nature.
I forget quite how much they made, but IIRC the Doom guys (I think it was just Carmack and Romero and a couple management/number-cruncher types at this point) made six figures on Doom while it was still shareware. Obviously their level of success isn’t the norm, but it shows that shareware can be a viable business model.
And the Doom guys continued to do shareware products after they went commercial. If you haven’t read the book Masters of Doom, check it out. I highly recommend it.
