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Software Options

by Alan C. Bonnici

2008-02-26 12:00:00+0

In the early days of computers software was looked upon as an add-on the hardware. A company spent a few 1950’s millions or a few 1960’s thousands to acquire a room’s worth of computing equipment and thrown in was the software necessary to drive it. During that era most of the organisation’s specific software needs were developed in-house.

Bill Gate, founder of Microsoft, is one of the people who actively strove to make software a commodity users paid for. Given the success of the company it is clear that he has been successful in making this happen. One method software-vendors adopt is that of providing heavily discounted software to students, large clients and emerging markets. Another approach is to striking deals with corporate clients in which their employees could either have a copy of the software on their home computer for free or for a discounted price. This addresses the issue of employees pirating software off their employers. Making it more difficult to pirate software by building in mechanisms into the software has had considerable success although legitimate users complain that they have to carry the cost and inconvenience these extra mechanisms bring about. An education campaign highlighting the fact that it is wrong to pirate software and that pirating software is equivalent to stealing is effective with many users. In 1988 Microsoft and other companies set up the Business Software Alliance (BSA) with the intent to fight piracy. This organisation has a legal and investigative team 100 person strong and prosecutes thousands of cases each year.

On the other side of the coin are those who advocate that software should be free to use. The reasoning for this is that society as well as the people who write the software stands to benefit from this model. They also purport that it is computer users' rights to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs and that any action to inhibit this goes against the interest of society. For example, these folk believe that placing patents on software will stifle innovation and competition and will technically destroy the small programming shops and hobbyist programmers who, because of huge legal costs, will end up at the mercy of large companies who have the financial and legal resources to acquire large numbers of patents and ward off small timers. They claim that patents will prevent programmers from independently inventing the same solution to a problem, something which is done regularly in this industry.

Each group has passionate supporters who can give reasons why the model they support is the best. Besides the reasons already mentioned, an evangelist would touch base with issues such as how easy, consistent and intuitive the software is to use and operate; the support and information available if one has problems; the technical knowledge necessary to install and customise the software; the comfort of knowing that the software company that created the software is in for the long run; what happens to existing users of the software if the company (or author) packs up or decides it is no longer viable to support the product; the limitations of software that is unable to be improved upon and enhanced by third parties; using programs that do not talk to other third party products (this is known as closed systems); problems that legitimate users suffer as a result of the copy protection mechanisms built into the software; how much users end paying up by opting for software from one stable or another and a multitude of other plusses and minuses of commercial vs community-driven software models.

In Malta, Microsoft has heavily subsidized software for students on a number of occasions. For a few Euros students could get a legal copy of Windows XP, Office XP Pro as well as Visual Studio .NET. This was followed a year later by a second offering consisting of Office Professional 2003, Visual Studio.Net Professional, Encarta Reference Library and Class Server Licence for a price considerably less than retail. The last offering from Microsoft was the Vista Ultimate Upgrade & Office 2007 Enterprise Offer. For a € 107 those who had subscribed to the previous offer could purchase this upgrade.

If you do not happen to be eligible of subsidized student software and must therefore pay retail, or are hell-bent on not supporting the commercial band wagon, it is now possible to rig up a fully fledged desktop computer made entirely of software that costs you nothing other than a voluntary donation. For example the Ubuntu Desktop Edition is a fully fledged graphic operating system that comes complete with the OpenOffice suit consisting of a Word processor, Spreadsheet and Presentation software. The Firefox web browser and Evolution email/PIM client cover the two products necessary for the day to day internet existence. Image editing software, music / video player and a chat client are other popular tools necessary in today’s linked world. This operating system will automatically download the latest updates and provides a graphical interface that allows you to install additional programs from its catalogue.

Home users are not the only candidates for open source software. Sterling Ball, CEO of Ernie Ball, the world's leading maker of premium guitar strings, gained popularity in this field after he vouched to eradicate all traces of Microsoft Software. It started when the BSA, after having raided the company, charged it $90K in penalties and legal fees. What really got Mr Ball fuming was the fact that Microsoft started using his company’s story in an ad campaign directed towards other companies who have unlicensed software. He took a decision to eradicate all Microsoft products from within his company replacing them with open source equivalents. He succeeded!

Besides these two extremes described above there other mechanisms on how software is distributed:

Shareware is a model for distributing software in which you get to try the software before you actually pay for it. The period of time during which the software is being evaluated is referred to as trialware. Once paid for, the software behaves as if it where commercial software. Different software publishers use different mechanism to get potential users to upgrade to commercial version:

Time restrictions limit the number of days the software will operate. In this scenario, the software initially will be fully functional but if the user does not pay up within a set time frame, the trialware will either cease to function or will behave differently (see points below).
The trialware has reduced functionality with some options only available in the commercial version. For example the trail version can only print the first page of a document.
Nag screens come up remind the user to register. Certain trialware progressively increase the duration and quantity of the nags ultimately making it very difficult to operate.
Tampering output. In this situation all printed output would carry an indication that the software is not registered. A watermark or note on each printed page or within the saved file ensures that all those who use the output are aware of the state of the software.

Not all shareware software have a rigid pricing scheme, some authors leave open the amount the user donates for using the software. Others request non monetary payments such as:

Postcardware, or cardware, you promise to send the author a postcard.
Emailware necessitates you send the author an email.
Software in which the purchase "price" is to buy the developer a beer, drink a beer in the developer's name, or send the developer a case of beer is known as beerware.
The careware license necessitates that you do a good deed or donate something to charity if you use the software.

Abandonware is software that was once published and copyrighted but is no longer being sold and no longer has technical support. Some supporters of abandonware drop the “and copyrighted” from the definition above and add the fact that the software cannot be purchased because the copyright holder no longer makes it available (for a fee or for free). Web sites which promote and store this software live in the grey aurora of legality and normally respect those authors who insist they remove their software creations from their listings.

A computer is its software. While it may no longer be the case when people went to a shop to purchase the spreadsheet program Visicalc they discovered they had to acquire the computer (Apple II) that it ran on, software is still the only reason computers exist and are so widespread. With so many people authoring so many programs for so many users it is likely that a solution to a problem exists in the world of software.

Contact Info

Author: Alan C. Bonnici
Email: chribonn@gmail.com
URL: http://www.AlanBonnici.com

This work by Alan C. Bonnici is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at http://www.AlanBonnici.com/articles.asp.