It’s important to know about the various categories of available software—at least if you want to stay on the right side of the law—before you go browsing for bargains, though. Some apparent bargains
are equivalent to buying stolen goods, and extended use of some seemingly free software is rather like filching newspapers from honor-system dispensers. If you want to stay honest, you need to know what’s what.

In the following, we explain each category of software and in most of these categories, you can find audio and video players, e-mail programs, online chat programs, graphics editors, Web page construction software, antivirus scanners, games, language translators, programming utilities,
spreadsheets, project management software, and much more.

Freeware. Freeware is copyrighted computer software which is made available for use free of charge, for an unlimited time, as opposed to shareware where the user is required to pay (e.g. after some trial period or for additional functionality). Authors of freeware often want to "give something to the community", but also want credit for their software and to retain control of its future development. Sometimes when
programmers decide to stop developing a freeware product, they will give the source code to another programmer or release the product’s source code
to the public as free software.

Adware. Adware or advertising-supported software is any software package which automatically plays, displays, or downloads advertising material to a computer after the software is installed on it or while the application is being used.

Shareware. Shareware is a marketing method for computer software. Shareware software is typically obtained free of charge, either by downloading from the Internet or on magazine cover-disks. A user tries out the program, and thus shareware has also been known as "try before
you buy". A shareware program is accompanied by a request for payment, and the software’s distribution license often requires such a payment.