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I find that crippleware is the more annoying than nag-ware. With nagware and timebombware, at least someone can still test it in a real world setting, whereas crippleware no one can. Whenever I come across crippleware, I don't care how useful they claim it will be, If I can't check to see if it will fit my needs, I uninstall it and look for something similar. If I can't find anything similar, I decide I don't really need it so badly. If the features are not restricted in any way, I will check it and If I decide it is worthy to purchase, I will do so.

IMO, cripple ware was one of the things that has pretty well killed shareware.

BTW, here are a couple sources for unrestricted shareware/freeware.

No Nags
Association of Shareware professionals

Here's a mass email I got that shares some of the dirt:

Subject: CoffeeCup Relinquishes Our ASP Membership

Fellow ASP Member,

I am sorry to say that the current board has lost Scott Swedorski as a Board member of the ASP over issues he strongly believed in. One issue was me. I had no idea until today that Scott and Ryan Smith nominated me for a Lifetime Achievement Award. I was very honored they did that, it was nice. The board voted this down though even though I was the only person nominated by more than one person. Scott got fed up and resigned for very good reasons. It just didn't make sense not to give me the Award unless it was personal.

Now honestly I don't have a chip on my shoulder or care that much about a plastic award. I have lots of them and a successful software business to back it up. Success counts, not a pat on the back from the industry.

What I do care about is respect. Saying that myself, Winzip, or C|net can not be recognized by the ASP because we don't post in newsgroups as much as other people is a farce. We run successful businesses and do not have time to post as much as those people that are less successful. Those are just the facts. I have been a member for 10 years when most companies that grew as much as we did would have left and never stood by the ASP or it's members again.

I have talked to and helped more people one on one by e-mail and at SIC then any current board member of the ASP or the SIC. There is no doubt about that. I have also brought some deeper thought to my posts in .marketing and hope I have helped you where simple answers were not the best guides to get you through day to day.

I have also had countless people join because 'I' was a member and many companies including Tucows came to SIC and joined the ASP because I invited them, not by the SIC or the ASPs invitation. Download.com started participating more because I asked them too and I talked with them for many hours over it. As some of you are aware we threw a party at SIC every year for members that cost us between $5,000 and $20,000 a year. And not a single thank you from either side of the street, ever.

The ASP is in trouble people. The budget is bad and it's marketing to get new members is even in worse shape. The logo and the Website are so awful, I would never join if I saw them. There are too many people with good intentions but there is no action. (and action beats intentions every day of the week)

When we volunteered to create the new ASP Website 1 1/2 years ago we never heard a thing from the Board or Ed Pulliam. We are the most qualified in Web Marketing and Web Design of any member the ASP has ever had but the board did not want 'me' to do it. They did not contact us and refused our help because they do not want to acknowledge that we are the face of change for the ASP. The way things were done for the last 10 years is now over. If the ASP wants to succeed or even survive they will need new voices of change and they will need them quickly.

You will all need a new board soon so vote well; and I am sorry, Ed Pulliam is not qualified to be President of the ASP. He is full of great intentions but no true action. I have been to his Website at www.ouisoft.com and if this is the direction he wants the ASP Website to go in, the ASP is in bad shape. It's not personal, just an observation that I am sure many can see. He failed at the ASP marketing plan and should not be president. If he worked for CoffeeCup I would have let him go. It's not personal though, I am sure h

1. Immediately(!) purchase the stolen software, using a Mastercard or Visa. The resulting download is evidence, and the purchase itself will be used later. Make every effort to identify who (URL, domain name, contact info, company name, etc.) is actually processing this credit card transaction (hint: it's usually not the kid in Pakistan).
2. Notify the contact info of the domain of the infringement. Use a DMCA-compliant notification.
3. Notify the next upstream ISP of that domain of same.
4. Notify the domain's registrar. Some have TOS which forbid illegal activity.
5. Is the bad guy still up? Then start notifying the credit card processor that they have participated in a sale of stolen goods. Use a letter that calmly documents the date of purchase, how you identified the download as a stolen copy of your software, etc.
6. When your credit card bill arrives, follow the instructions on the back of the bill to contest that purchase. Inform the credit card company of everything that's happened, including dates and times and copies of correspondence
7. Join the ASP. It's a chance to notify fellow software producers that their software is being ripped off along with yours (and increase the pressure on a particular pirate site). It's also a way of supporting an organization that works to support your right to make a living selling software.

The wheels of the law can take much time to grind to a conclusion, and not always in your favor. Visa/Mastercard can issue a $20,000 fine in a much shorter time, and they don't have to consult a jury.

In the Wild West of Internet fraud that involves money flow, Mastercard/Visa is judge, jury, and executioner. Most victims simply don't know enough to bring their case to them, or the amount of fraud would be dropping.

Google is my biggest driver of new traffic. Both using natural results and also using adwords. Software download sites also provide some traffic (more so on the macintosh side). And my slashdot sig brings in a surprising amount of people =)

What resources do you use for information on legal and tax issues?

The internet at large has a lot of information if you go looking for it. I am a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals, which contains a huge amount of experience from people that have been doing this for years. It costs $100 a year to join and get access to the private newsgroups and article archive.

Patents are certainly a bigger problem than they use to be. However, it's still somewhat rare that a patent puts an ASP member out of the market. Sometimes a payment deal is struck. Probably the most common event is that people get "patent fishing" letters from IP law firms who send out lots of "you might be violating our patent" letters in the hopes of reeling in some payments. The reason is, it's often hard to prove you're really violating a patent without a look at your source.

But this is just one of many issues you'll face as a shareware developer (I use "shareware" to simply mean the "try-before-you-buy" marketing scheme that almost all independent developers who sell to the public use). If you're serious, do yourself a favor and join the ASP so you can avoid a lot of costly mistakes.

The Association of Shareware Professions has loads of good info in and around its website. There are member-only newsgroups that are also very useful. It costs $100/year to be a member, but if you are planning to make a business out of it it is well worth it.

Small, independent developers, however, are recognising this is a serious problem and are generally stumped by what to do about it.

Piracy is kind of like spam, in that it's a cost of using the internet. Just as there are a bunch of things you can do to reduce spam, but no silver bullet for eliminating it, people in the business have a laundry list of steps for reducing piracy to acceptable levels. Some of them include:

• Use well-known "locking" software. After a few weeks on the ASP newsgroup, you quickly discover the handful of tools for serial-number locking that generally offer the best results for software products.
• Maintain and exchange blocking lists. A lot of cracks result in a sudden burst of download activity from "warez" sites. When these crop up, ASP members block the appropriate IP addresses, and often offer them to others (sounds more like spam, don't it?)
• Get the warez site shut down. This is something ASP members have a lot of experience with. Being able to have helpful friends in some of the far-off countries that some warez sites live in is sometimes the key to getting their plug pulled.
• Offer value that requires a website connection. That free serial number ain't so cool if a significant part of the value comes a feature that involves connecting back to the publisher's website, and you find your serial number was already "used up". Some members are also experimenting with schemes that allow remote revocation of serial numbers.

I agree. Sites like -
Software Marketing Resource http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/

Dave Talks
http://www.davetalks.com/

ASP
http://www.asp-shareware.org/

These sites contain a bunch of information and tools for marketing software online. The sites are not stagnant, they are constantly updated. With current issues like the impact of SP2 on download numbers, and discussions about VAT, and digitally signing an exe in the forefront. A much better value IMO.

While some software packages can be successfully sold using online channels exclusively, these are the exceptions

That pretty much assures me the author does not know what he's talking about. The vast majority of software packages are sold exclusively via the web. They are mostly Windows software, mostly small companies (<10 people, skewed towards the 1-man band), and mostly make such a modest amount of money that the author should perhaps be forgiven for not noticing where the bulk of the software market iceberg lies.

If you want to really learn about selling software, join the ASP and talk to the little guys who (cumulatively) are making most of the software that gets sold in the world today.

Disclaimer: I'm a member, but I (alas) make no money for telling people to join :-).

The Association of Shareware Professionals has some great resources for writing, marketing, and selling software for the author on a tight (read almost no) budget. While some companies probably get VC help, I think this a great start for research if you are interested in trying out some capitalism with your software. There is a lot of competition due to the low barrier of entry, but a motivated individual with talent could end up quitting their day job. WinZip is a good example of a success.

What do you need investor money for? You own a PC, or you wouldn't be on slashdot... Compilers are a dime a dozen... The biggest expense for many companies is R&D... It's not like you have to stop looking for a job while you're coding - you keep your skills current... The cost to enter the software development business is pretty much nil for someone who isn't working...

I guess before there were investors, there were no companies, and all companies have required investor money to get going...

Those of you interested should check out the Association of Shareware Professionals ... Lots of good info here...

no bsa to fight for them

What about the Association for Shareware Professionals

The ASP should simply define themselves as a guild for "independent" or one-man software shops, because that's what they are. They have no relation to shareware any more. I don't mean to be too critical of them, however, because such a guild or association is badly needed, to do everything from help people buy their own health insurance to lobby against bad copyright laws and zoning that stops you from working from your garage.

The original deal offered in shareware was "here is a fully functional version, if you want it to be worth my time to make more versions, send me a small amount of money." The first adulteration of that was the nag screen which went away once you paid. If you pay to make the nag screen go away, then you are not paying because you want the author to keep writing software.

Sometimes you sent money and you didn't want the software author to keep working on this program, which was perfectly fine and you weren't about to upgrade to something with new features that got in the way. You sent money because you figured, "if this guy has spare time he will probably write something interesting and maybe useful, so it's worth $10 to see what happens."

The spirit of Shareware lives on today in the Free Software authors who have paypal donation buttons and cafepress t-shirt shops. Not in the crippled demos which fill up download.com.

The ASP should simply define themselves as a guild for "independent" or one-man software shops, because that's what they are. They have no relation to shareware any more. I don't mean to be too critical of them, however, because such a guild or association is badly needed, to do everything from help people buy their own health insurance to lobby against bad copyright laws and zoning that stops you from working from your garage.

The original deal offered in shareware was "here is a fully functional version, if you want it to be worth my time to make more versions, send me a small amount of money." The first adulteration of that was the nag screen which went away once you paid. If you pay to make the nag screen go away, then you are not paying because you want the author to keep writing software.

Sometimes you sent money and you didn't want the software author to keep working on this program, which was perfectly fine and you weren't about to upgrade to something with new features that got in the way. You sent money because you figured, "if this guy has spare time he will probably write something interesting and maybe useful, so it's worth $10 to see what happens."

The spirit of Shareware lives on today in the Free Software authors who have paypal donation buttons and cafepress t-shirt shops. Not in the crippled demos which fill up download.com.

Although the parent comment comes off as a troll a bit, the question is actually an interesting one I think. Sometime during the last decade there has been a shift in what we consider shareware. It is now pretty commonplace to move beyond simple nag screens in shareware - especially games.

The definition of shareware as per the ASP is "a marketing method, not a type of software or even strictly just a distribution method." So you could say that although there has been a shift to more than nag screens, the basic definition of shareware is still the same, and it differs from box products with demos (for instance) because it is more than the demo. It is a marketing tool, a distribution tool, and (hopefully) a pretty functional version of the product that you can evaluate.

As a shareware author, I can definitely say that shareware's not dead, although the term "shareware" is getting old. You can read about the history of shareware at the Association of Shareware Professionals website -
History of Shareware

Shareware is really just software that is marketed as 'try before you buy'. I don't refer to shareware on my website - I just refer to a free trial.

There are many Independent Software Developers working on games, utility type programs, and small niche software.

You can get really useful info online from the Association of Shareware Professionals . They have lots of tips for developers and distributors.

I went to one of their annual conferences when I was almost ready to market my little Mac shareware app. It was a lot of fun and very informative, despite the predominance of Windows people. Hmmm, let me reword that. Some of my best friends are Windows people. What I mean is, I learned a lot about things like marketing, security, setting priceing, etc. that are platform-independent.

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Just an observation: wasn't the whole idea of the formulation of the GPL to mimic the commercial shrink-wrap license?

That would be the root of the argument made by an Anonymous Coward earlier in this thread, that the collapse of the GPL in its current form would weaken all shrinkwrap agreements.

I would be interested in hearing what the Software and Information Industry Association (formerly the Software Publishers Association) has to say on the issue. (You can look, but when I posted this nothing was there on the subject.) Then there is the Association of Shareware Professionals who also haven't said a word.

Why bring up the ASP? I suspect that if the GPL falls, so will the shareware license agreements, and pretty much for the same reasons: privity. Remember, shareware is meant to be distributed by the buying customer to other third parties.