webfork wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2020 9:54 am
That you to define both terms.
Adware is
too loose a term and often has a negative connotation to it (beyond just "I hate any talking me into buying things!"). It is frequently used to describe software that abuse/frustrate the user with ads (
see the AV definitions).
I would, personally, draw (or smear) a fuzzy acceptance line at whether the ads are online (privacy concern) and whether they eat away a chunk of the UX/UI: fixed space, popups, images, distraction (on purpose or not). Maybe also frequency.
Adware is unkind to something like
Swiss File Knife (which promotes the book and the full version in the help or with certain commands)
or replace.exe which I described in the last post Edit: Bad example. See post #16.
Ad-supported may be too kind to software that use
OpenCandy, for example.
That you spell out exactly what this change would solve. I'm a little blurry on the value here. Maybe something like "some visitors seeing 'ad supported' will think more positively about the included programs".
When I suggested ad-supported
instead of adware, I was mainly concerned with being fair to the "good" apps. I wasn't concerned much with being
too kind to online-ad-retrieving ones. How would you solve that? Two terms?
I would be OK to call online-ad-retrieving apps adware (simply because I won't care to use them so I won't really mind if they got lumped with malware-adware under one umbrella term. Maybe it will discourage them from doing ads this way, for all I care!
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I'm very reluctant to just reword the same thing on the off chance that it may be associated negatively or confuse some visitors. It's a distinction without a difference like "used" vs. "pre-owned cars."
It may be like calling any older car a "beater", even it works fine and is well-maintained? Just an example.
you seem to think "adware" is too close to malware.
Not necessarily, see above.
which makes me picture big, aggressive advertisements, popups, nag screens, etc? Maybe "ad-supported" conjures a Joe Computer trying to keep his small business afloat?
Joe Computer can be abusive and aggressive in his monetization efforts. What matters is the behavior.