free software

Freeware (a.k.a., free software) is software that is available at no cost to the user, now or ever. Developers often cover their development costs by running ads on their sites or accepting donations from users via PayPal or other means.

Freeware is generally only available in its final form and cannot be modified by the user, which is what differentiates it from "free software" or open-source software, where users are allowed and often encouraged to make modifications and improvements and redistribute it.

Andrew Fluegelman is credited with first popularizing the term freeware when looking for ways to distribute his communications software PC-Talk without using traditional costly means of distribution. Freeware is commonly available on the Internet for download, and such digital distribution cuts cost of sales down to almost nothing beyond the bandwidth used to transmit it.

Freeware programs can be almost anything, from screensavers to system utilities to media players to security applications.

by Mark Buckingham Are you a writer, passionate about this or any other topic? Join Blogcritics!

Latest blogosphere posts tagged “free software”

 

• BioniX-Desktop Wallpaper Changer

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  BioniX-Desktop Wallpaper Changer 7.0.4 We strongly recommend you this popular desktop wallpaper cycler! For details please visit producers web site now: www.bionixwallpaper.comwww.bionixwallpaper.com BioniX Wallpaper change your desktop and lets you to set the time interval at wich your deskop wallpaper will be ...
  7 hours ago

• PDF Forms

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  PDF Forms 1.5.0 PDF Forms is a new product in our PDF applications line, which already contains PDF PROvider, PDF Printer and WEB to PDF products. PDF Forms is a mobile software tool to manage PDF documents, such as interactive forms, articles and notices or contracts, using annotating, filling and signing ...
  7 hours ago

• FotoSortierer XL

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  FotoSortierer XL 3.0.1 Over timeyou get great quantities of Digital camera photos on your computer. The clarity is lost, duplicate folders and duplicate photos, pictures are not rotated, folder names do not match, no reasonable FolderStructure is present. You search for everey single photo …Is this your Situation? ...
  8 hours ago

• JHashDigester – Mac OS X installer

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  JHashDigester – Mac OS X installer 5.0.0.1 FREE DiceLock Security JHashDigester Java .JAR library.If in your process or software applications you have need for hash computation, you can incorporate JHashDigester library in your applications to generate the hash you need. Incorporate hash algorithms in your ...
  8 hours ago

• AllMySongs Database

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  AllMySongs Database 2.1 AllMySongs Database is a music library for managing and cataloging music files and AudioCD. Supports MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, FLAC e.t.c music files formats. You can easily find any song from your music collection according to title, album, artist, genre e.t.c. or any complex conditions. Also, with ...
  8 hours ago

• Assessment OMR Suite Personal Edition

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  Assessment OMR Suite Personal Edition 2.0.0.0 Create, manage, print and process the questions and answers for any paper-based assessment or survey. Manage your question bank by entering them into your database only once in your life and easily reuse them later. You can enter both closed (multiple-choice) and open ...
  8 hours ago

• Universal InDesign Magazine Template 1

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  Universal InDesign Magazine Template 1 This InDesign magazine template comes with 28 pages of unique multi-purpose layouts – no "ad here" cutting corners! It has elegant and modern style throughout the document allowing you to use it for any type of a magazine – corporate magazine, IT magazine, culture magazine, ...
  8 hours ago

• AAC Audio ES Viewer

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  AAC Audio ES Viewer 2.0 AAC Audio ES Viewer solution provides a visual representation of the structure of Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio elementary stream (ISO/IEC 13818-7). The AAC audio frames sequence can be investigated along with the most common parameters of each audio frame in the applications list view. ...
  8 hours ago

• AC3 Audio ES Viewer

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  AC3 Audio ES Viewer 2.0 AC3 Audio ES Viewer solution provides a visual representation of the structure of AC-3 audio elementary stream according to the ATSC A/52 specification. The AC3 audio frames sequence can be investigated along with the most common parameters of each audio frame in the applications list view. ...
  8 hours ago

• MPEG Audio ES Viewer

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  MPEG Audio ES Viewer 2.0 MPEG Audio ES Viewer solution provides a visual representation of the structure of MPEG audio elementary stream according to the ISO/IEC 11172-3 and ISO/IEC 13818-3 specification. The application supports the most popular broadcast MPEG-1 Audio Layer I and MPEG-1 Audio Layer II formats as well ...
  8 hours ago

• DBX to Microsoft Outlook

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  DBX to Microsoft Outlook 5.6 How to convert DBX to Outlook without losing vital email information? With DBX to Microsoft Outlook Conversion tool developed by SoftSpire users can import DBX to Microsoft Outlook instantly and can keep all the important information intact. OE Converter also offers these salient features ...
  8 hours ago

• Free Bulk Mailer

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  Free Bulk Mailer 8.4 Bulk Mailer is a professional high-performance bulk email software for targeted email marketing campaigns and powerful email lists management..With Bulk Mailer You can easily manage opt-in mailing lists for your subscribers, create high personalized HTML messages and newsletters and send them in ...
  8 hours ago

• Outlook 2003 Plugin Message Sensitivity

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  Outlook 2003 Plugin Message Sensitivity 1.0.1 Message Sensitivity is a plugin for Microsoft Outlook 2003-2003 that allows changing sensitivity of message with just one click.With this plugin now you can mark your e-mail messages as confidential very fast and simple. Outlook 2003 Plugin – Message Sensitivity What ...
  8 hours ago

• My Backup Drive

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  My Backup Drive 4.8 My Backup Drive makes online backup easy and automatic. If you dont frequently run your backup or dont have a backup at all, you risk losing valuable files or priceless digital memories. Hardware failure, human error, viruses, theft, and disaster can all destroy data in the blink of an eye. Let ...
  8 hours ago

• Eunomia Process Builder

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  Eunomia Process Builder 2.0.0 Eunomia Process Builder is an easy-to-use business process modeling tool (BPM tool). It allows designing IT or business processes and generating process web sites with great look and feel and easy access to the information. It can be used for instance in the scope of CMMI or ISO process ...
  8 hours ago

• SECUDRIVE Privacy Protection

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  SECUDRIVE Privacy Protection 1.0.0.14 SECUDRIVE Privacy Protection is a powerful, easy-to-use security software suite, designed to protect your privacy and prevent data loss. This simple and light security software allows you to enhance your PC usage experience with data encryption, folder hiding, file synchronization ...
  8 hours ago

• NShape 1

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  NShape 1 NShape is an Open Source diagram designing framework for .NET WinForms. NShape has been designed for complex industrial applications that require diagramming capabilities, e.g. for wiring schemes or flow charts. It therefore supports features that are specifically targeted towards advanced scenarios: – Each ...
  8 hours ago

• HOA Tracking Software

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  HOA Tracking Software 2.2.1 Manage Tenant/Owner Notification Letters, Accounts Payable, Dues and more… When managing critical and detailed data, such as that associated with the daily activities of a Homeowners Association (HOA), accuracy and ease of use will ultimately determine whether a system is effective. Many ...
  8 hours ago

• Aspose.OCR for Java

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  Aspose.OCR for Java 1.0.0.0 Aspose.OCR for Java is a character recognition component that allows developers to add OCR functionality in their Java web applications, web services and Windows applications. It provides a simple set of classes for controlling character recognition. The API is extensible, easy to use and ...
  8 hours ago

• Eudora Converter

  
  Plenty of Software: Free downloads center — Authority: 124
  Eudora Converter 2.5 Eudora Converter is a perfect solution designed as SoftSpire labs for converting Eudora emails with all email attributes such as formatting, attachments and Meta information. Conversion of Eudora emails is a very needed and common task among users who wishes to change Eudora to any other email ...
  8 hours ago

Comments about free software