Talk:List of freeware

This article was nominated for deletion. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination:

keep, 6 May 2014, see discussion.
keep, 28 February 2012, see discussion.
speedy keep, 2 January 2010, see discussion.

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Operating systems[edit]

I think this page is a valuable tool. I do take personal offense that (from the links I checked) this seems dominated by Microsoft Operating Systems requirements, without specification in the title or header. There are other operating systems like Apple's OS and Linux. Perhaps there should be multiple lists to accommodate each major Operating System.Trackinfo (talk) 21:54, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a useless article[edit]

Thought the article needs a lot of improvements but it's not a useless article at all. It needs some citations. And there are many mistakes in it, specially in arrangement. And many softwares missing. But I think it's an important article. Let the wikipedians improve it. But it should not be deleted at all. And User Trackinfo commented that it's Windows dominated article. I agree with him. There are lots of windows users as compared to Linux and Mac OS. But by the time, wikipedians who contribute using Linux and other OSs will improve it.
|MYounis | talk 06:48, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately for some of us, the mere fact that an article is useful is not a reason for retention.--DThomsen8 (talk) 01:34, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This article is pretty much useless because[edit]

It does not differentiate between freeware for home/personal use and freeware for commercial use. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.237.59.2 (talk) 16:36, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My opinion is that almost all of these freeware will have different rules for business use (i.e. less than free for business use). If you are looking for software that is free for any purpose, the stuff on Free software or List of free software should be pretty much all that. This topic could do with a name change, like Restricted free software or something, to split the confusion with free software, but we must stick to the commonly used names of subjects. I personally believe the compromise is using the common name to educate the reader to the grammatical terms of a subject, but it's never just so simple like that.

Anyway, if anyone with the same interest reads this, why don't you consider making this list, List of freeware unrestricted to business. But you'll probably find the nature of freeware is not very helpful to business. It's a free sample as an advert in most cases. ~ R.T.G 03:18, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Inclusion criteria[edit]

Well, we might as well get this over with. What's our inclusion criteria? Since the recent AfD raised issues of the definition, I think that it's only natural that we use third party, reliable sources to determine eligibility. That means no primary sources, such as the info page on a popular software application, which might label itself as "freeware", even though it fails any independent definition. Next, we need to determine how literal the wording needs to be. Must the word "freeware" specifically appear in the source? That might make sourcing the article a little more difficult. I found a list of "free software" in PC Magazine, but the word "freeware" is never specifically used anywhere. I don't have a problem with this strict interpretation, but it might result in the exclusion of prominent software until we can find an appropriate citation. Also, what about open source software that gets called "freeware" by reliable sources? I assume we're just going to ignore that, as we've already got lists of free/open software. I might try to find citations for the easy ones. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:52, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well done to you for your work on this list. I am not sure when the current lead was written, but it seems to make a distinction quickly enough. The freeware topic could, and probably should become something like, freely useable "closed source" software, but there is much material about that issue outside the wiki. I haven't read much into in a couple of years but the article Freeware itself seems to have good information on the matter. The different evolutions of software were subject to intense development in every level, not just the coding itself. It's defined quite clearly as a coined term specifically about software free to use, but restricted in some other way. However, the individual citations may indeed be the best thing for the appearance of notability, well done. ~ R.T.G 03:53, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]