Although economist Milton Friedman once proclaimed that "There's no
             such thing as a free lunch," that doesn't necessarily hold true for
             software. There are some totally free programsâ€"quite a number, in
             factâ€"that come without so much as an advertiser's banner across the top as
             a form of payment." (Some freeware' is free to the user, but not to the
             advertiser, and those do carry banners, or even spyware, which reports your
             Internet efforts in aid of market research.)
             Websense Inc. reported in 2002 that the number of freeware and
             shareware sites on the Web had spiked 315 percent in the previous year to a
             total of more than 4,300 Web sites and a total of almost 1.3 million Web
             pages. Freeware sites distribute free software the user can download;
             shareware sites offer software on a free trial basis and usually including
             an expiration date, which is tracked. (Business Wire, 2002)
             Popular systems such as the Linux operating system are subject to
             massive independent peer review, so bugs in any freeware or shareware for
             the most common systems is readily found. Freeware and software are also
             two-way streets; hackers who add enhancements because of the source code
             license being free return those enhancements so the original developer can
             redistribute the software including those enhancements. When Netscape
             released the sourcecode for its browser, enhancements happened quickly and
             globally. "Within seven hours of releasing the source code of its browser,
             which did not include full-strength encryption, a group in Australia built
             in the full-strength encryption that Netscape could not distribute because
             of U.S. export laws," according to an InfoWorld report. (Radosevich, 1998)
             Many IT managers at corporations complain about freeware and
             shareware because problems with it, when it is loaded onto corporate
             computers, especially those interfacing with a netwo...