If you don't you may get software you can't use and be subject to a restocking charge for your error. Some first-time users are confused about the difference between the shareware and commercial versions of some of our products, particularly our fonts. About a third of the fonts we produce are released as shareware either through the featured fonts section of this site, public FTP sites or online services like America Online and Compuserve. Our main purpose for releasing shareware versions is advertising. They give you a chance to try the font out and see how it looks first-hand.
Shareware versions are almost always the very first workable version of the font.
As a result they may have only a limited character set, or may not include some punctuation or special characters. This is not a deliberate attempt to cripple the shareware versions, just the result of a desire to get them out to the public so users can preview the font before its official release.