There seems to be a plethora of software licenses that downloads come with. There’s freeware, shareware, creative commons, commercial, free trials and so on. What’s the difference between all of those licenses? How do they restrict our use of those applications? Why do some applications suddenly stop working while others can be used freely as long as you wish? If you don’t know the answers to these questions then, read on.

When we talk about licenses, we refer to the agreement between the software author and software user. It governs the usage of the software, the liability of the author, and a great many other things. While it is important to know about software licenses, it is equally important to learn about copyright issues regarding the software source code. Software is basically divided in to two types: Proprietary and Open Source. Learning about them will clear a lot of things for you.

Proprietary software has rights exclusively owned by the author. Developers are usually not allowed to see the code that makes the software. And even if they could get their hands on it, they are not allowed to copy it or use it since they do not own the rights to it. Doing so would constitute copyright infringement. With proprietary software, the terms of usage are totally governed by the author. For instance, they can demand that the software be used only on a single computer. They can demand that you pay multiple licenses for their software if you are going to use them on multiple desktop computers. Think Microsoft or Apple software products.

Open Source refers to software where the source code for developers to use. This entails that the software itself is free for users to download and use. Unlike proprietary software, open source software is not made for profit. The motivations for releasing programs as open source are many. Some developers, who love building applications for its own sake, simply want to give it away for free. Some obtain money by giving away the software for free, and provide paid customer support. The Linux operating system is an example of an open source product.

Now that we know the two main types of software categories, let’s take a look at the types of licenses they come in.

Free Trials

Free trials are versions of a commercial product that are available for use within a limited amount of time. Once installed, most types of free trial software provide full use (or with some features disabled) until the trial period expires. Free trials are usually the least useful amongst software downloads.

Shareware - These programs are usually crippled versions of commercial software that are freely available to use. Unlike free trials that sometimes lock the application after a trial period; a shareware application has no expiration date. Rather it has a few features permanently disabled that can only become unlocked upon purchasing the licensed version.

Freeware - These are totally free applications; no crippled features. However, some may feature built-in advertising. The code is proprietary and the author holds exclusive copyrights to it.

Donation Ware - Same as freeware but appeals to your conscience to send the author some small change for all of their hard work. The software may include a guilt-inducing advertisement inside the application.

GPL - General public license also known as open-source. It is totally and absolutely free. These are usually the best types of free software because they can be as good as paid ones, especially if they are popular.