Wayne.B wrote:
On Mon, 06 Feb 2006 15:50:29 -0500, Harry Krause
wrote:

Then I stumbled across Unlocker. It's freeware, not shareware. Costs
nothing.

What is their business model that allows them to develop and
distribute free software without going bankrupt?


Never seen the concept before? There's several ways to do it. One, when
it gets popular, you then start charging for it, either straight sale,
or subscription. Two, you give away a stripped down version (lost
leader), but sell a "professional" version, similar to pkzip. There's
other ways to make it work, too. Do you remember when Peter Norton came
out with Norton Utilities? It was at first freeware, available through
PC Magazine. This was in the DOS days, and the program's total use was
to retrieve data that you had accidently erased from a DOS disk. As you
can see, it's grown into a very lucrative business!