that's not what shareware was tho, shareware was basically proprietary software you are giving the permission to duplicate and distribute at your own will, usually with that software being a demo for a paid product.
"shareware" always had a financial implication to it.
When I was at Autodesk in the early 90's, I and a couple of others [1] gathered a lot of free packages / tools off of Usenet into a local shared directory. We called that "PubWare" (as in public and free)
We called them “freeware” but that’s about price not rights to modify/distribute. “Free as in beer” as the old readme would say as opposed to “free as in freedom” or “free as in speech.”
Shareware is free proprietary software with limited features to "trick" you into buying the full software. Nothing related with freeware or open-source software.
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When I was at Autodesk in the early 90's, I and a couple of others [1] gathered a lot of free packages / tools off of Usenet into a local shared directory. We called that "PubWare" (as in public and free)
[1] yo, Steve Litras!
Can't wait to play dumb when some dude inevitably goes "☝️🤓 well actuallyyyy it's called open source"
"No, shareware. Like Rust."
"That's open source."
"Umm you must be confused with OpenAI or something..."
I don't remember if there was a something-ware that was a 1-1 with open source.
I can't think of one.
It's accurate to the literal words of the compound word, but not accurate to the meaning of the compound word itself.
Funny & sad at the same time.