Commercial software

Commercial software, or seldom payware, is computer software that is produced for sale or that serves commercial purposes. Commercial software can be proprietary software or free and open source software.

Background and challenge

While software creation by programming is a time and labor intensive process, comparable to the creation of physical goods, the reproduction, duplication and sharing of software as digital goods is in comparison disproportionally easy. No special machines or expensive additional resources are required, unlike almost all physical goods and products. Once a software is created it can be copied in infinite numbers, for almost zero cost, by anyone. This made commercialization of software for the mass market in the beginning of the computing era impossible. Unlike hardware, it was not seen as trade-able and commercializeable good. Software was plainly shared for free (hacker culture) or distributed bundled with sold hardware, as part of the service to make the hardware usable for the customer.