The following mainly is an excerpt from my recent article "PDF Creator - Good Bye". If you have read that article you don't need to read this one.
Developers of free software always had the problem of somehow making some money; they have bills to pay too!
Quite often good free software was meant to be an "entry drug", to entice you to later buy the paid version of that software. Users of these programs were reminded at certain intervals or during certain functions like updates to buy the paid version.
Over time these reminders became more intrusive and sometimes even sneakily disguised down to the point of being outright obnoxious. Good examples of the latter are AVG and Avast antivirus programs.
To further the sale of paid versions the developers of these programs made it more and more difficult to upgrade without inadvertently switching to the paid version.
Another method of attempting to get at least some money was and is soliciting donations from users of the program. Way too few people were willing to part from their $$ for a piece of "free" software, even if they used it daily!
Both aforementioned methods and others apparently did not have the desired effect. Software developers now are prone to look for a more direct method of getting paid.
They fall for the sales pitches of third parties and offer Foistware.
Rather than repeating all the information I point you to a very good description of foistware in this ZDNet article by Ed Bott. I recommend a look at his "Foistware Hall of Shame" as well.
As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.
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