☞ The Nature of Shareware
The Gift Economy meets Profit Motive?
During my Macintosh-infused youth, I quickly became aware of one category of computer programs: shareware. Shareware is not something that we really think about any longer, but for a time—perhaps its heyday was the Nineteen Nineties—it was a major route for distributing software.
Shareware was given away by its creators, accompanied by messages that were increasingly frequent or hysterical encouraging the user to send a check to the creator. The shareware program was often limited in some way to further incentivize payment: you would only receive the ability to unlock its full featured abilities (or additional levels of a game) after you paid.
One particularly inspired shareware mechanism that I remember from my childhood was something included in versions of a game called Escape Velocity. Published by Ambrosia Software, Escape Velocity was a role-playing outer space arcade game, where you explored your corner of the galaxy in a spacecraft and accrued wealth and experience. However, after thirty days of being able to play the game at one’s ease, an enemy vessel named “Cap’n Hector”—which had simply harassed you with messages to pay for the game—would attack you. And you could not win. Inevitable death by Hector’s hand was your fate. The only solution? Pay up, or stop playing this game.
Shrink-wrapped software this was not. There were no boxes or printed manuals to accompany these programs, unlike much of the software at the time where you went to a store and paid for it. You downloaded these programs off websites or message boards or AOL or Compuserve. And yet, shareware ended up as a large part of the software ecosystem. On the Macintosh at least, it wasn’t even just games that were shareware. From what I remember, there were shareware utilities and productivity tools, programs of all types.
While shareware often meant only beer money for its programmers, it could sometimes mean big money. The iconic video game Doom was released as shareware. It spread kudzu-like to all corners of computational society, conquering the computer gaming world and made its creators very rich. Because people paid for shareware that they loved.
This sharing of software was an important aspect of the software ecosystem. It bred a distinctive kind of culture, one that burst with pride over what you’ve made. But it was also clearly a distribution channel. Unlike paid-for boxed software that was the default, this was a gift economy mingled with the scent of the profit motive: here’s something I made; and if you love it, please show your appreciation (kind of like today’s freemium models that even well-capitalized companies use). Shareware combined the Internet’s ability to distribute software with the assumption of inherent goodness—incentivized by hamstrung programs—to reap profits. And it was a delight. ■
I recently finished reading Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford, and it was wonderful. Set in the 1920’s in a rich alternate American history—the book contains both a map of its United States and a street map of the city of Cahokia!—it’s a murder mystery in a world where the indigenous population of North America thrived in a way far different from our own. As a fan of alternate histories (some previous writing: 1, 2, 3), I heartily recommend it.
Since my last newsletter when I announced my new list of sports teams named after technologies, I have received many new additions. Go check out the updated list.
Also, what do readers think of counting clothing as a technology (eg. Red and White Sox teams)?
The Enchanted Systems Roundup
Here are some links worth checking out that touch on the complex systems of our world (both built and natural):
🜸 Commodore 64 claimed to outperform IBM's quantum system — sarcastic researchers say 1 MHz computer is faster, more efficient, and decently accurate: “At the beginning of the paper, the researchers admit that their ‘Qommodore 64’ project is ‘a joke,’ but, sadly for IBM, its proof of quantum utility was also built upon shaky foundations, and the Qommodore 64 team came up with some convincing-looking benchmarks.”
🝳 My memories of what life was like before the Internet: “Many Americans alive today witnessed one of the most dramatic cultural transitions since the invention of the printing press: The rise of the consumer Internet, beginning around 1994. For everyone else, life before the Internet may seem like a distant, foggy past. To help future generations understand what happened, here’s what life was like back then, mostly based on my personal recollections as someone born in 1981.”
🝤 Hot Dogs, Cancer Cells, Replication, and AI: “Printed words alone are nowhere near enough to be the launching pad for future scientific advances.”
🜹 She Built a Microcomputer Empire From Her Suburban Home: “In the mid-1970s, from her suburban California home, Harp McGovern—a housewife and mother of two—began assembling memory boards and other computer expansions to sell to the growing hobbyist and business markets. With her friend Carole Ely, she grew their company, Vector Graphic, into a major manufacturer of microcomputers, eventually taking it public before Big Blue—IBM—muscled into the market”
🝊 Tinker: “What happens when an AI designs the chips needed to make its successors?” A short story.
🜸 First known fractal molecule is a natural mathematical marvel: “But now, scientists at Max Planck Institute and the Philipps University have found the first regular molecular fractal. It’s an enzyme used by a species of cyanobacteria to produce citrate, which was found to naturally assemble itself into a specific fractal pattern called the Sierpiński triangle.”
Until next time.