Will freeware kill shareware?

Dave Fancella gets philosophical about the impact of the free software movement on the shareware industry in his NewsForge article.

” Will free software kill shareware? Every day we celebrate the victories of open source software against the big guns, enjoying each corporate and governmental adoption as it comes. We talk about how wonderful it is that open source software is taking part in a larger social and economic revolution and comment on how we’re looking forward to the day when open source software will dominate the software industry. The little guys, the story will go, put together a series of tools that evolved into a complete operating system which ultimately took over and threw down the big monolithic software giants. And all along, we, the little guys, kept to our values and ideals, held strong in the face of corporate threats, and banded together to Fight the Good Fight. What started as a bunch of little guys turned into several companies, and these companies grew until they were big guys. Then we garnered the support of several large companies and flirted with even more. Until one day we looked around and realized we weren’t the little guys anymore. And we forgot about the little guys.

So what happens in 15 or 20 years when free software rules the world? Where will the shareware guys be? Will it still be possible to eke out a living holding back portions of your intellectual property in exchange for money? Will there still be a business model in keeping your source code to yourself?

I started this article intending to determine whether free software would kill shareware. I’m still not sure, but I wonder — if free software kills shareware, who is going to write all the truly useful applications?”