A company might employ the freeware marketing model when, like Microsoft, it has a platform or family of products. The freeware product acts as a sort of loss leader , attracting the target audience with the intention of getting them to then pay for the other products within the family. As we have already discussed, Microsoft used the freeware approach very effectively against Netscape s Navigator. Fifty years ago, the notion of releasing a product unfinished with the intention that the public would help complete it would have been considered either cowardly, cheap, or inept. But in the new regime, this pre-commercial stage is brave, prudent, and vital.
Beta testing involves sending the software outside the company to the general public for testing.
Creating the same variety of conditions in a lab environment or getting a large number of people together to test software, is prohibitively expensive for most companies. Thus, the beta testing approach is often used. Software beta testing has a very short history because beta testing is directed at the general public and before the 1990s, very few people had computers at home. In 1994, Corel was one of the first companies to use beta testing. Over 400,000 preview testers, myself among them, and 30,000 official testers received copies of Windows 95 in its early beta stages.