freeware

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing

<legal> Software, often written by enthusiasts and distributed at no charge by users' groups, or via the web, electronic mail, bulletin boards, Usenet, or other electronic media.

At one time, "freeware" was a trademark of Andrew Fluegelman. It wasn't enforced after his death.

"Freeware" should not be confused with "free software" (roughly, software with unrestricted redistribution) or "shareware" (software distributed without charge for which users can pay voluntarily).

Jim Knopf's story (http://freewarehof.org/sstory.html). [Jargon File]

(2003-07-26)

The Jargon File

[common] Freely-redistributable software, often written by enthusiasts and distributed by users' groups, or via electronic mail, local bulletin boards, Usenet, or other electronic media. As the culture of the Internet has displaced the older BBS world, this term has lost ground to both open source and free software; it has increasingly tended to be restricted to software distributed in binary rather than source-code form. At one time, freeware was a trademark of Andrew Fluegelman, the author of the well-known MS-DOS comm program PC-TALK III. It wasn't enforced after his mysterious disappearance and presumed death in 1984. See shareware, FRS.