Differentiate between Sharewaree and freeware.
Answers
Shareware is typically on-premise software that is intended to be paid for, but usually comes with a free-to-use version that may be fully featured or often has features that are only activated if you buy the software and get the appropriate software license (the license itself is usually a file of encrypted directives that the software uses to “unlock” upgraded features). This type of approach is often described as a Freemium business strategy.
A lot of PC third-party utilities are shareware, especially Data compression software as well as some Antivirus software.
The shareware approach is really a software distribution model, where people are encouraged to “share” the software with their friends - this was especially the case in the pre-Internet days - and the vendor hopes that enough people pay for the upgraded software to make a business out of it.
Nowadays, “shareware” is rarely “shared” by individuals distributing the software on physical media such as Floppy disks, but the freemium model is used by a lot of software that is downloaded from websites and (hopefully for the vendor) upgraded to the “payware” version by the user.
As for freeware, there’s many categories of free-to-use software with different license properties. The main difference between it and shareware is you typically don’t ever pay for the software itself, and source code is typically available. As for some categories:
Open-source software - software that has source access but is usually distributed with very permissive source-code licenses that permit the source to be used in “payware” projects. Usually some variant of the BSD license come with this software.
Free software - software that has source available, but usually has some variant of the Copyleft licensing schemes such as the GNU General Public License. Source distributed under these licenses has to remain “free software” and can’t be incorporated into a payware product easily.
“Public domain” software, such as SQLite, that have extremely permissive licenses that pretty much allow you to do anything with the source code.
The de facto business model in much of the freeware world is selling support contracts or having consultants who maintain it, advise in how to use it in complex environments, provide upgrades for it, teach classes in it, etc. Companies like Red Hat use this model to make money in open-source and other types of software.