Michael said:
Could I ask for clarification about the following point:
Should one post information about programs which are shareware, but
which are fully functional, apart from a possible invitation to
register when started, or other nag information?
My attitude (until someone corrects me) is that any program with
useful functionality (even if less fully featured than a paid
version), and any program with functionality for a certain period of
time is a suitable candidate for posting here, with a warning.
There are people who try to defend an ideal, a principle, of free
software, showing nearly religious attitudes.
You will probably hear from them.
They can be pretty irritating in their moralistic attitudes and
preussian adherence to pure principles, like they had just learned to
think clearly and have a strong need to keep a strict order in their
brains.
It also helps their self-confidence to have some reason to be a
policeman, to have power, to be righteous, to be a leader in the
majority.
Every program has its nag factors. A bad user interface, a bad choice
of the programmer, too small and ugly fonts, or an intentional nag as
in shareware or adware.
To me a program is very valuable if its positive value is far greater
than its nag factors.
Total Commander has enormous positive value, as it is de facto the best
dual pane file manager. Even the competition acknowledges that.
And it is freely available from
www.ghisler.com
If you use it without paying you have to do one extra click every time
you reboot, otherwise the program is fully functional.
The nag factor is very small compared to the value of the program.
I see it as an exception. It isn't real freeware technically, but I
think people should be informed about it, because of its exceptional
value and its leading position in the dual pane file manager market.
Opera is another exception we hear about now and then here.
Proxomitron is technically not freeware either, but is accepted anyway,
because its value far outweighs its nag factors.
If you want to be sure to be on-topic you can inform others about new
FREEWARE plugins and addons for TC. There are thousands of such addons,
and most of them are freeware.
The author of TC is cooperating with the add-on writers, he helps them
to make the program better. The latest version has an install-plug-ins
section, so you can install freeware plugins directly from the web,
while you are still inside TC.
This works well because the freeware plugin writers and the author of
TC have agreed on a format for packaging and installing plugins.
The screenshot of TC has looked uglier than the program itself for
years, but now I see he has updated it.
http://www.ghisler.com/picture.htm
You can customize TC so much that no screenshot can show what it will
look like with your favorite settings. The screen shot does not show
color coded file names after types, for example. I have all exe files
red, text files green, media files purple, etc..
