While I was reading this fun piece on the history of early US personal computing magazines, authored by one of its main actors, I came across the following passage -- which I don't even know if it's correct but that I reckon totally deserves to be recorded here:
Andrew [Fluegelman] quit working full-time at PCW so he could launch his own software company, which was based around a communications program he had authored called PC Talk. This program, which allowed PC users to send files back and forth to each other over a modem, was the first 'shareware' program. The whole concept of 'shareware', which Andrew called 'freeware', was invented by him because he didn't have the time or resources to market his software in the more traditional way."
That has also been my general understanding of their difference for the past decades, Andrew. I just thought this previously unbeknownst inception narrative to be rather intriguing...
BTW for those who like this kind of digging, there's an online archive of Byte magazine up to May 1994 (I still keep its September 1995 issue in my office for no particular reason...):
