🚀 go-pugleaf

>I noticed this difference recently when comparing cd-roms of "free"
>software, both from Infomagic.  A 4cd set of win95 programs had nearly
>every program saying "shareware, pay $xx for the full version and to
>get rid of these annoying messages"
...
>Linux ftp programs are free.. completely free, no shareware fee etc.

It's not just Linux and Win95.  It's basically old stuff versus new
stuff, and Wintel stuff versus other stuff.  

The "old" stuff tends to have more experienced people, who grew up
with tons of free software around, and so that's natural to them.  The
"new" stuff has new people, unfamiliar with the culture, except that
of their own groups, so they see only commercial software, and think
that asking $30 for a program is a bargain.  For example, "old" might
consists of USENET people who grew up with lots of cross pollination
and source code newgroups (which existed at one time); whereas "new"
might be people that grew up with a PC and only expensive BBS access
with only a tiny clique of local people and few drops of source code
to find.

And for non-Wintel systems, freeware is VERY common.  Who knows why,
maybe because only Wintel has a large enough user base of people to
extort money from.  Try to sell shareware on other platforms, and
you won't make any money, and many of the users will just write their
own version that's better anyway.

I think it may also be that Wintel is dominated by business thinking.
To them, computers are not hobbies, you don't use them for the fun of
it, they're machines to do work.  Thus, if you write a program, you
expect to be compensated, because it was work.  The thinking of "time
is money" is honestly believed in the Wintel world.  That sort of
thinking rarely comes about in the non-Wintel world.  This probably
best explains why programs that barely work, crash often, are painful
to use, and were obviously written by novices, tends to have the most
obnoxious registration notices.

To the freeware person, they've spent many long hours deciphering a
system or device, and getting things to work, and at the end, they
want to share this with everyone (with the expectation that other
things will be shared in return perhaps).  The freeware person is part
of a *community*.  To the shareware person, they want to sell that
hard earned product.  The shareware person is not in a community.

I've also noticed that the vast majority of shareware (there are
exceptions) are crappy.  I prefer freeware, will buy commercial
software, but shareware comes in a far distant third in priority
of things I'll consider using.

-- 
Darin Johnson
darin@usa.net.delete_me