Though, you may be noting a difference between proprietary freeware vs open source freeware, based on your post?Įven still, there are cases where the free version of a software is really good, though it's typically a 'trial' version to egg a user into buying the real thing, such as Da Vinci Resolve which is excellent despite being free. There's plenty of free software out there that have a long, reputable history such as Audacity and Gimp. I think freeware shouldn't exist because of the fact you can never trust it 100%. Like I mentioned earlier, as long as checksums are provided, it fulfills the same purpose. So unless you have the source code to such software or games, you can't ever trust that it's safe to use, really.Īlso in the case of the Code Signing Certificate, I think the whole thing is a scam. This is the real only way to trust the software that is released, or, in the case you still don't trust a pre-built version, you have the option of making it yourself with the code. I think when it comes to fan games and specialized tools, they should 100% of the time be open source. I don't wanna stand on my soapbox too long for this one, but yeah. I know it's like, a non-answer in a way but you just gotta mostly go with your gut, or, be extreme like me and outright reject fan games/tools that aren't open source. I think a few of us can remember incidents like the Sonic 2 HD keylogger, or the Sonic Gather Battle DRM.

But then you have the issue of trusting the author of the software itself. Those who release the software can provide checksums (I think it should be required honestly) so users can check that their file is unaltered. It's always a good idea to scan the file using something like VirusTotal.

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