Postcardware

Cardware or Postcardware is a form of software that is distributed similar to shareware, here on the condition that users send the author a postcard.

Cardware as a software category

Postcardware or shorter Cardware is a form of freeware, ie free software that you may continue to spread. The English portmanteau word created from Postcard (Postcard) and software.

These programs are called Cardware because the author asks for sending an original greeting card as a thank you, a token of appreciation or recognition or registration of the product, provided that the program has found favor. Instead of a different form of payment is requested to send us a postcard. Compliance with this requirement is not enforced as a rule. The concept was first, used by Aaron Giles, author of JPEGView. A modification represents Emailware in which instead of a postcard an e -mail is desired.

Cardware as PostIdent

There were still around provider of free mailbox services in the 1980s and early 1990s as a prerequisite, the operator of the system (usually private individuals) to send a postcard. Often this was used to verify the identity of the requestor because the operator often except a pseudonym had no other identification method. This tradition of the early days of the Internet it has partially succeeded in the present. Provider of free, non-commercial shell accounts using this method today.

Reduced access is thereby usually granted immediately by sending a postcard to other functions or rights enabled. Often this is expected to bring unusual possible motives or certain sayings on the postcard.