Downloading Programs and Software essays

Downloading Programs and Software essays Although economist Milton Friedman once proclaimed that "There's no such thing as a free lunch," that doesn't necessarily hold true for software. There are some totally free programsquite a number, in factthat come without so much as an advertiser's banner across the top as a form of payment." (Some freeware' is free to the user, but not to the advertiser, and those do carry banners, or even spyware, which reports your Internet efforts in aid of market research.) Websense Inc. reported in 2002 that the number of freeware and shareware sites on the Web had spiked 315 percent in the previous year to a total of more than 4,300 Web sites and a total of almost 1.3 million Web pages. Freeware sites distribute free software the user can download; shareware sites offer software on a free trial basis and usually including an expiration date, which is tracked. (Business Wire, 2002) Popular systems such as the Linux operating system are subject to massive independent peer review, so bugs in any freeware or shareware for the most common systems is readily found. Freeware and software are also two-way streets; hackers who add enhancements because of the source code license being free return those enhancements so the original developer can redistribute the software including those enhancements. When Netscape released the sourcecode for its browser, enhancements happened quickly and globally. "Within seven hours of releasing the source code of its browser, which did not include full-strength encryption, a group in Australia built in the full-strength encryption that Netscape could not distribute because of U.S. export laws," according to an InfoWorld report. (Radosevich, 1998) Many IT managers at corporations complain about freeware and shareware because problems with it, when it is loaded onto corporate computers, especially tho...