Software licenses - what they actually mean? - Part 1

You might probably have heard of different software licenses like freeware, shareware, demo, trial, public license etc. But what do they actually mean? What are the do's and don't s with them? What are the services we get from software provider? In this post I am trying to answer them.

First about Freeware

Freeware is usually a software that you get for free. It does not cost you anything.

What you are allowed with a freeware?

1. You are allowed to use the software free of charge.

2. For most of the freewares you are allowed to distribute unchanged copies of the software to anyone you like.

What you are not allowed with freeware?

1. Freeware versions of many commercial software prohibits its users to use the software for commercial purpose. Here the software is free of charge for personal use only. They will charge the product If you want to use it for commercial purpose.
2. The user is not allowed to change the distribution in any way including adding or deleting features or customizing by editing the source code which by the way you will not be exposed to normally.
3. There are some freeware which does not allow distributing the installer file. Internet explorer is one of them. Read user agreement carefully for such limitation of use.

Many freewares are much much better than their priced competitors.

So what is the problem if you use it carelessly?

Well, the most concerning thing about freeware is the security. they comes with no warranty as you are not paying for it. If anything happens to your system its your own problem.
Some freeware downloads contain malicious viruses. So always check the installation file with an antivirus software.
Some software sends back authorized information to the parent server. Do not allow any unnecessary internet access to any software.
The person who built the software suddenly stop further updates on the software. This leaves you on a blind end road. This would not create a problem if it uses standard file format to
store data. Other wise you are in trouble here.

A little tip for you here - If a file is not in any usual format and is small, try to open it in notepad. Many file formats are just only extension change to .txt files.

How to be on safer side with freewares?

Most of the freewares are safe even so I recommend researching a bit about the software you intend to install. This will bring up news about stability and safety of the program. Downloading from established companies like downloads.com also guaranties peace of mind to some extend as they will thoroughly review the product before inclusion.

What is the difference between http://example.com and http://www.example.com.

Both 'http://example.com' and 'http://www.example.com' are technically different but practically the same. This means that though the search engines reads the two as different URLs the result you see will be the same most of the time.

If they are not much different should you be bothered about it?

Yeah, a bit. Because the search engine reads the two URLs as different, every data in the search engine will be different for the two. Data I mean hear is about the link popularity, search keyword, cache, etc. The problem here is that if half the people are coming to your site by non-www link and half by www link your popularity also will be halved. You might see both of them as in a result for a search with two different cache if the cache were taken at different times and you have updated your site in between.

What you should do in this case?

I suggest you do a permanent redirect to your preferred URL. This will ensure that people coming through both URL will come to same place. The Permanent redirect is otherwise called 301 redirect. You can read how to create a permanent 301 redirect here. This is the way of telling the search engine that you wish to show your preferred URL and the process is known as canonicalization of URL. The 'to redirected' URL is known as canonical URL.

Understanding the <meta> tag

          This blog post is written with a prejudice in mind that you, the reader knows that <meta> tag is placed in between the <head> tags. And all the things within the meta tag is called metadata
          Meta tag is the most in-discussion tag in whole html world. Why is it so? What is Meta tag actually?
What benefit will it give you? I am trying to answer these questions from the point of view of a beginner. In any case it goes beyond that, please forgive me.
          In simple terms metadata is the resume of a document. The <meta> tag contains information regarding the type of document, author, keywords, description etc.
          Meta tag was actually created for giving these information to the search engine robots(these are software that index the content of websites and blogs) and web browsers.
The format of meta tag usually is : <meta name="author" content="James Anderson">
          Most frequently used meta tags are these,{ I am writing them as if it is of this blog post and with a fictional author James Anderson (Name courtesy: Matrix movie)}
<meta name="author" content="James Anderson">
<meta name="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<meta name="description" content="This blog post helps you to understand meta tags better">
<meta name="keywords" content="html, meta, beginner">
          Content-type says what the format of the document is. Author as denoted saves Name of author. Description gives a short description of the content of the file i.e., extract of the information available to the user. Keywords contain some words that best represent the document.
          Schematically the above meta tag will look something like a profile page


          You can add lots of meta tags even funny ones (though doesn’t make any sense to machines) like,
<meta name="my-mood" content="I am happy now">
          Any way these are not helpful as search engine does not recognize them. Above that adding meta like these will reduce the page rank. I suggest you add only the ones which are relevant to your site.
          Meta tags were used extensively in the earlier days. But some ambitious (crooked) webmasters tried to cram the meta with non-relevant keyword to get better ranking in the search results. Sometimes most of the keywords were not in the body of the document. This made the search engines to turn their thoughts a little to focus on the body of the document rather than the meta tag. Even so some search engines are said to be sticking to meta tags.
          So I would suggest you to add some keyword and a small description to meta tag so that you will be ready in case any search engine look at it!!!