What is a Freeware?

[Urban Legend]

Freeware is copyrighted computer software which is made available for use free of charge, for an unlimited time, as opposed to shareware where the user is required to pay (e.g. after some trial period or for additional fuctionality). Authors of freeware often want to "give something to the community", but also want credit for their software and to retain control of its future development. Sometimes when programmers decide to stop developing a freeware product, they will give the source code to another programmer or release the product's source code to the public as free software.

The term freeware was coined by Andrew Fluegelman when he wanted to sell a communications program named PC-Talk that he had created but for which he did not wish to use traditional methods of distribution because of their cost.[1] Previously, he held a trademark on the term "freeware" but this trademark has since been abandoned. Fluegelman actually distributed PC-Talk via a process now referred to as shareware.

Source: wikipedia.org