Free Software: Apps, Programs, OS’s and Utilities
Free is a word used in the technology world to usually describe software, apps or programs.
Many people expect something free today. Whether it is a free MS Windows program, a free Android app or a free operating system. People have tried to hack and crack software for decades and have succeeded at it, however there have been and continue to be ‘flaws’ in this type of activity.
Technically illegal, it is virtually impossible to ’police’ and hold any individual legally accountable due to the complications based around privacy and a person’s rights to privacy or to just even be held accountable at all, regardless.
Companies, however, are legally challenged from time-to-time over copyright or intellectual property (IP) theft. This is mostly because a lot of money can be involved.
Torrents are pirated (copied), hacked or cracked files such as movies, music and software.
Often these torrent files are either poor quality, will infect your device with malicious ware or will not work (offline or after going online due to trackers within the software that companies use to disable your cracked software).
Computers
Many companies may want you to try their software by offering you a one (1) month or 30 days free trial and after that time has expired, you must either pay for it or uninstall it (remove it). Some apps are genuinely free, but most ‘free’ apps are open-source, which means that it has a public license, for anyone to freely use and distribute in its original form (that is, not tampered with before distributing it without permission from the developer, because the software may be subject to terms which include tampering with it and distributing it as a potential or actual new product for sale. The developers are allowed to demand a fee to use, change or share their software, if they deem you to be making a profit from it in the form of money.
Source Forge has been the most popular open-source website for anyone to download free apps/applications/software/programs for Windows, Mac and Linux. The website address is https://sourceforge.net/
Some companies release free utilities or ‘tools,’ to download for use of their products, but also - sometimes other products. For example, a disk formatting tool, made by one company, may work on products made by other manufacturers. For example, a formatting utility made by Seagate to format Seagate hard disk drives, may also work with a Toshiba hard disk drive.
Software Types - Internet Name | Meaning |
Freeware | Free software |
Demoware/Trialware | Time-limited full-featured commercial software (7, 14 or 30 day trial software after which time you must pay for it or uninstall/remove it or it will not work) |
Shareware | Freely distributed and functioning software that does not contain all of the features (limited functionality), unless you pay for it |
Commercial/Proprietary/Closed-source | Paid software or apps which includes all features with advertising and watermarks removed (unrestricted use, so long as you have paid for the licence for your device – many software developers are strict with licences, in that usually they will only permit 1 licenced copy of their software for use on 1 device |
Open-source | Free software that may ask for a donation or be under development. It is free to distribute and use without a commercial licence. |
Here are some website links where you can download free (open-source) software programs or apps for your computer or smartphone:
The Free Software Directory: https://fsf.org
Here is the shortcut to the software directory: https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Main_Page
Platforms: Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android
Graphics/Picture Editor (Adobe Photoshop Copy): https://gimp.org
Platforms: Windows, MacOS and Linux
Encyclopedia: https://wikipedia.org
Office (Microsoft Office copy):
https://libreoffice.org (Libre Office)
https://openoffice.org (Open Office)
Smartphones
There are sites such as apkpure.com and apkmonk.com which allow you to download and install apps without going through the Google Play store, allowing you to directly download and install software without gaining permission, however your Android system must have the permissions to allow apps to be installed from unknown sources. .
The file extension for installing apps on Android are .apk files, which must be given access permission in settings on your phone (allow apps to be installed from unknown sources).
If you do a search on the internet, there will be websites out there that offer independently made, as well as commercially available apps for Android - downloadable as a .apk app installer file.
This is the native installer file format for Android.