Monday 28 April 2014

Shareware vs web servers

Before (the widespread consumer use of) the internet, we had "shareware". This was software that you were encouraged to copy from person to person, try out, and pay the owner (on the honour system) if you kept using it. Thinking about it now, that has some elements of P2P filesharing, though the payment system was obviously the only thing that worked at the time for non-traditionally-published software. These self-published software developers treated software copying as word-of-mouth advertising and, because they couldn't rely on an internet connection, the only measures they could try to take against non-paying customers was to try and make the software only function for a certain time, or only distribute a functionally limited version. This is the software environment I grew up in. Mail-order software as advertising for honour-system payments. No wonder I'm so different to today's always-on webserver thinkers.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I need to work on that.
PPS - It's not that I can't think that way, it's just not my default setting.

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