Shareware: R.I.P.

[bigred]

Undestand I'm not expecting long-term handouts and would pay a reasonable price for a full up version of a good piece of s/w. But the whole "trial and error" thing aside in general, more than once recently I've downloaded stuff that doesn't even work (or at least not as advertised). But even beyond that, a lot of these are getting so invasive, worse even than commercial stuff. They don't just toss their meat hooks into your registry, run on boot up w/o asking (etc) but many now insist on hooking into you via the net or installing toolbar crap I don't want on my browser....on and on. Plus I'm more than a little leery about "spyware" concerns.

R.I.P. the golden days of shareware and oh btw, screw them guys. It's enough to drive me to microsoft.

 

[RSLancastr]

I agree with everything you said there, but it seems to apply to all software nowadays, not just Shareware.

And Shareware, like all software, has always had its share (no pun intended) of crap. Sturgeon's Law, dontcha know.

 

[a_unique_person]

Microsoft is way ahead of you. Vista can only be reinstalled once, apparently. After that, you have to buy a new copy.

 

[Rob Lister]

Yet another market opportunity.

Is there an organization that 'certifies' software is non-evasive? Sort of like Underwriter Labs but for software where in each product is given a series of grades based on operational factors. If this doesn't exist, it should. It would be profitable.

 

[MortFurd]

Yet another market opportunity.

Is there an organization that 'certifies' software is non-evasive? Sort of like Underwriter Labs but for software where in each product is given a series of grades based on operational factors. If this doesn't exist, it should. It would be profitable.

Not that I know of.

The closest that I can think of is the GPL (Gnu Public License.) You can count on any program released under the GPL to be free of crap. Since the source code must be released (for use and further distribution by the user) with any binary copy of a program, any program that included crap would be cleaned and the clean version available in short order.

I have yet to see a GPL program that included any kind of spyware or instrusive feature.

(I use loads of GPL software routinely. Safe, free, and created by programmers who want to keep it that way.)

 

[Rob Lister]

Not that I know of.

The closest that I can think of is the GPL (Gnu Public License.) You can count on any program released under the GPL to be free of crap. Since the source code must be released (for use and further distribution by the user) with any binary copy of a program, any program that included crap would be cleaned and the clean version available in short order.

I have yet to see a GPL program that included any kind of spyware or instrusive feature.

(I use loads of GPL software routinely. Safe, free, and created by programmers who want to keep it that way.)

But GPL is almost self-defeating under most market circumstances, so too few want to play (there has to be a market incentive).

There could be levels of certification wherein the evaluating agency does not need source code. It could be like an X - X - X certification wherein you get graded on several factors.

I see profit.

 

[Ripley Twenty-Nine]

Microsoft is way ahead of you. Vista can only be reinstalled once, apparently. After that, you have to buy a new copy.

As of yesterday, this is no longer true. The EULA now states that you can uninstall it and reinstall it as many times as you want, as long as it's only on one PC at at time.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

And what is it with dumping junk on my desktop without asking? Do I drop my dirty coffee mug on your desk? Your product isn't important enough to assume it should add an icon to my desktop.

~~ Paul

 

[Dark Jaguar]

I don't really bother with most apps, because the majority of them are useless. Cigarette counter?! I don't smoke! Traffic ticket tracker? Who's got such a problem with that they need such a thing. Wacky cursors? I can get my own cursors without some insane program in the background doing who knows what else.

 

[bigred]

Yet another market opportunity.

Is there an organization that 'certifies' software is non-evasive? Sort of like Underwriter Labs but for software where in each product is given a series of grades based on operational factors. If this doesn't exist, it should. It would be profitable.

I like it, I like it.........do it!

 

[Ducky]

As of yesterday, this is no longer true. The EULA now states that you can uninstall it and reinstall it as many times as you want, as long as it's only on one PC at at time.

So what happens when the motherboard of your laptop is replaced? You have to buy Vista again? It won't show up as the same computer after that.

That's crap.

 

[opqdan]

Yet another market opportunity.

Is there an organization that 'certifies' software is non-evasive? Sort of like Underwriter Labs but for software where in each product is given a series of grades based on operational factors. If this doesn't exist, it should. It would be profitable.

This is one of the reasons that Linux distributions normally have some sort of package manager. Red Hat has RPMs, Slackware has yum (right?), Debian and Ubuntu have (I believe) Apt, and Gentoo has Portage. These are white lists containing installations for all of the known good software packages. These are maintained by developers and maintaners who can be trusted, and through mirroring and checksums it would be extremely difficult for a hacker to infiltrate the system, but they also include ways that you can take the risk upon yourself and manually install software that is not in the database.

This doesn't have to be only for open source software either. There are plenty of proprietary packages in all of the systems mentioned above. If only Microsoft would do something similar (they would probably catch flak for it though, maybe it is better left to an independent party).

 

[GregC]

So what happens when the motherboard of your laptop is replaced? You have to buy Vista again? It won't show up as the same computer after that.

That's crap.

Here where I work we've run into that with XP. We upgrade a computer and reinstall Windows and it won't let us register. It does give you a support number to call. You call the number, explain the situation and they give you a code to key in and you're off and running. We've never had MS tell us we had to purchase another license. I would hope that MS takes the same approach with Vista.

 

[snooziums]

Thank goodness I use Macintoshes. I can replace just about every part of the computer and there is no problems.

Which was handy when my Mac Mini fell several feet onto concrete, breaking the mainboard - I was able to pull the hard drive and place it in my iBook, and there was no problem retrieving the files to back them up.

 

[kevin]

softpedia awards ratings to software without spyware or freeware. here's an example from a text editor I use:

http://www.softpedia.com/progClean/PSPad-Editor-Clean-6399.html

As for GPL, Red Hat, Novell, IBM and several other companies are making tons of money off of GPL software. A number of individuals make some money off GPL software asking for donations (it is rare to make a significant amount of money this way.)

 

[Ripley Twenty-Nine]

Here where I work we've run into that with XP. We upgrade a computer and reinstall Windows and it won't let us register. It does give you a support number to call. You call the number, explain the situation and they give you a code to key in and you're off and running. We've never had MS tell us we had to purchase another license. I would hope that MS takes the same approach with Vista.

Yes, that is exactly the approach they are taking with Vista. Most likely it will give you x number of validations over the Internet without having to call, but beyond that, you will have to call. From what I've heard, if you mention that you've installed new hardware on the same machine, they will always give you a new serial without asking any more questions.