Is CroPL ShareWare?
No. You must agree to the license agreement BEFORE evaluating CroPL, and the license agreement gives you no flexibility about when to and whether to pay for it. Except for these caveats, CroPL’s license is fairly similar to shareware, in the sense that you can evaluate the software without financial risk. I’m not a strong believer in the shareware model; I’m cynical enough about human nature and human self-deception ability to believe that when people are given flexibility in when to pay, it gets put off…indefinitely. Unfortunately, the few experiments I’ve seen done on this issue tend to support that cynical view: “crippleware” programs, for example, are registered at a rate considerably higher than pure shareware ones. (I’m defining shareware in the classical sense, of full-featured programs with a “when ready” payment scheme. Such payment is not intended by the author to be “optional,” but it’s often seen that way by the end users.) This is partly why classical shareware is disapp
