There are many definitions of shareware and freeware software licenses. Software distributed in lieu of some fee over a period of time till its validity of install expires is a shareware. A freeware is a software generally available free of cost for use. As beginning of the software market introduced many strategies to get software popular over the competitors and let users decide which one is the best. Shareware is concept of software marketing not the name of licenses or product categorization.

Absolute Freeware or Free Software: The software is free to download, use and even you can modify it according to your needs if you know some programming. But the free software has restriction that they cannot be branded or sold under restrictive licenses. You can sell it to charge for your services but you cannot stop user from obtaining the source codes.

Freeware with Restricted License: This term implies that the software can be used by user free of charge but modifications are not allowed in the software. The whole of the source code are retained by software’s coders to get credit of it and develop it further. The restrictiveness of use could be free usage for personal programs, academic programs, non-profit applications, free for charity organizations use.

Other types of freeware can be called as Requestwares. These requestwares are the software’s which are given free of charge to use in lieu of some service to be done by the user which could be either paying for the beer, seeing the advertisements, installing some more software’s like search tool bars or anything like that. This is a loosely held category between freeware and shareware.

Nowadays, on internet if you put some search you will find lots of sites offering you the freeware/sharewares. Below is a list of my favorite software download sites. But before downloading any software you must check following points.

• Check software reviews at five to six sites.
• Check that software should not contains any kind of malware or adware.
• Check that you have proper equipment to install software because graphics software could put your hardware at risk.

Sites For Freeware Software:

FreewareFiles: A trusted site with many freeware and free software’s for every platform and no sharewares. Software is categorized and frequent updates of new freeware are done every day.

FreewareHome: One of the oldest website having quality freeware with large category on the side pane with easy navigation. Here you will find some very rare software also.

Freeware: Site with many sharewares and less of freeware. Still under build but has impressive links to the other freeware/shareware sites.

OnlyFreeware: This is the site with one freeware added and emailed to your inbox every day. Impressive additions, with date and reviews.

Freeware.Intrastar: Simple site with low number of freeware but they are very good and some rare pieces also categorized accordingly.

SourceForge: A site totally dedicated to open source projects with thousands of free software’s to download.

Freeware-Guide: Lots of freeware to download.

Below are some of the sites which offer both shareware and freeware. A general review about these sites is they have well defined categories with site search facilities.

Snapfiles: Lots of freeware and shareware with cool navigation.

Tucows: Software reviews and huge collection of shareware and freeware software to download.

5star-shareware: Good site, with thousand of freeware and shareware.

SharewareJunkies: This is the site for shareware and freeware for trials.

Download.zdnet: This is one of the trusted reviewers of shareware and freeware downloads with thousand of software.

Download: Another trusted software reviewer with lots of downloads.

It is safe to download software if you go to trusted sites or otherwise you will be left up with a system full of viruses and malware.