Every Freeware Download Site Is Serving Crapware

howtogeek.com

15 points·aburan28··7 comments

Why do these sites even exist?

If I want HandBrake, I get it from handbrake.fr. I get VLC from videolan.org. I get OpenBSD from one of its mirrors. Etc. Etc.

So are download sites mainly for the subset of people who a) download software (a small percentage of all users) and b) don't know enough about that software to know where it comes from?

In the past people knew the WWW was risky and that you should only download software from trusted sources. These places quickly became trusted sources.

That's obviously wrong, but the problem wasn't helped by a bunch of projects using eg Sourceforge for hosting.

Sometimes the official website only provides their software through these websites

There's a ton of money in it. IronSource, a few year old startup, is a litte-known unicorn rolling in money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IronSource

see forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2015/02/25/israeli-un...

The sad truth seems to be that there is no other business model for download sites. Maybe we should really improve micro payments to be able to pay for good services.

Even though I'm pretty disappointed in the quality/quantity of apps in the Windows app store, 'crapware' is the biggest reason why the app store needs to exist.

You can't expect non-experts to find, download, and install apps safely anymore.

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