Some software costs money, and some software is truly free. But in the middle, there's a grey are. Perhaps one of the best examples is WinRAR with its 40-day free trial, which, as anyone who has downloaded it knows, last far longer than said time period.
It's no accident that WinRAR gives its program away for free even after its 40-day trial. It's part of the company's business plan: Give away core features with light pressure to pay, add special features for heavy-use customers like businesses. It's an older, less transparent version of the freemium model that partially paved the way for much of the internet as we know it today, with Spotify's success to name one.
YouTuber CHM Tech investigates WinRAR's gift:
[youtube ]https://youtu.be/fTgZRVVr3_Y[/youtube]
WinRAR, like universal media player VLC, has evidently never felt much pressure or change its business model. It's simply a program that works, that creates and gives the ability to view archives in RAR or ZIP file formats. Created in 1995, it's longevity is a testament to how well its model works. No need to fix what isn't broken.
Source: CHM Tech
David Grossman is a staff writer for PopularMechanics.com. He's previously written for The Verge, Rolling Stone, The New Republic and several other publications. He's based out of Brooklyn.
