Is Free Software taking over?

By Luqmaan

When it comes to software it would be fitting to call it the ‘good new days’ and the ‘bad ‘ol days’, compared to the past there are many free good software and what’s surprising is the fact that sometimes the free software are better than the shareware in the same software category.

Today an average computer user could have a perfect system with a great software configuration without losing a cent from an OS to a media player.

Where there is vista and xp there is the free open source Ubuntu. Where there is Microsoft Office there is Open Office. Similarly looking at every software category where there is the well reputed shareware there is an equally equipped freeware application too.

Let’s look at some of the other software categories. Anti Virus, Kaspersky for just 70 bucks…AVG for free. Anti spyware, Ad aware professional for 40 bucks…Spybot for free. Media players, Power DVD for $65…vlc for free and so on.

If you take any other category as well you’ll find where there is shareware there will be similar freeware software available. Of course some categories are dominated by freeware… web browsers for example, the top three software are all freeware. [Firefox, Opera, IE7]

While this trend of free software exists some people still prefer shareware as they believe that with good free software there is always some ‘catch’ which involves a negative effect on the user. While this idea may be accurate sometimes in most cases these freeware providers have ways to gain.

One way would be through advertising and others simply develop free software especially software developed by one or a small group of people as a leisure activity.

But overall the balance between shareware and freeware is well in equilibrium, where both software have equal response. If freeware takes over, hardly developed shareware by companies which deserve to be paid for would go into decline. The way freeware is appreciating I doubt there will be any shift towards shareware unless freeware providers start looking at other negative ways of personal gain.

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