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Careware (or charityware, helpware, goodware) is software distributed in a way that benefits a charity. The term "CareWare" is a variant on shareware and freeware. Some careware is distributed free, and the author suggests that some payment be made to a nominated charity. Other careware includes a levy for charity on top of the distribution charge. It can also be a barter of some kind, or even a pledge to be kind to strangers.

The concept of careware and the first known use of the term itself appeared in Dr. Dobb's Journal in Al Stevens' C Programming Column in about 1988. Stevens was developing a user interface library and publishing the source code in monthly installments. To distribute code to readers, Stevens suggested they send him an addressed stamped mailer with a blank diskette. He copied the code onto the diskette and returned it. He also suggested that to express their appreciation they include a dollar, which he would donate to the local food bank in Brevard County, Florida. Stevens named this distribution method "Careware."^{[citation needed]}

Paul Lutus's CareWare idea involves no monetary exchange - instead it involves a request for the user to stop complaining for a while and make the world a better place. [1]

For example, the vim text editor is free software but includes a request from its author, Bram Moolenaar, that users donate to ICCF Holland for work to help AIDS victims in Uganda. Another current example is MJ's CD Archiver, a file archiver for Microsoft Windows/Linux/Mac OS X. The suggested charity is NACEF, a US-registered charity for China's Project Hope.

One more example of careware is the card game of concentration [2] where the author simply asks that if you plan to keep and/or use the program that you donate $5 to someone much less fortunate than yourself.

A close variation of careware is donateware, which has a stricter definition than careware.

• KiXtart
• Arachnophilia
• Vim (text editor)
• fireFTP, a FTP extension for Firefox
• RenameStar, a multiple file renaming utility
• Charity-ware.org houses a collection of over 100 charityware titles created by a variety of developers.

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.