Classic Freeware

The art of freeware has basically been lost. Anytime you find a "free" program that's newer than around 2015, likely as not, it's riddled with telemetry, keyloggers, and all sorts of "fun" stuff such as subscriptions they don't even tell you about. If they don't have any of these things, they're still likely a live service that is doomed from the very start to be unusable when their servers go, like GPT-4 or an online AI upscaler, or when Amazon's AWS doesn't like the competition you bring.

The existence of freeware software often came in one of a few ways: A company or individual who originally sold a product has made it free to use without limitation and dropping the price requirement, it was meant to be free in the first place, or some court shenanigans made it free due to the contents of the ruling. Either way, these older programs and games meet these requirements for me to consider them freeware:

• Just the program, no extra bits save for the mid-install offer, which should always be refused, unless additional functionality can also be added for free
• No functionality is locked behind subscriptions and full version modes
• Does not need authentication online in order to work, or in order to verify a legit copy
• Does not use telemetry, spyware nor keyloggers to steal information to sell to the highest bidder
• Is not open source, meaning you cannot easily change how the software works. FOSS is a different beast.
• Does not use copyrighted assets or designs from another program. These are fan projects and outside the scope.

That's not to say there aren't true freeware bits of software being released anymore. However, I'll first list some examples that are NOT freeware, or have mutated into something that is not freeware.

NOT Freeware

Microsoft 365: Online checks, subscriptions (that get changed on the fly to squeeze you), telemetry
Adobe Suite: Same as above
EA Origin: Telemetry, online checks (for some of EA's games, you lose access if servers are down)
ABUSE: A 2D platform shooter that was originally sold but went open source, including assets. This is FOSS and ends up outside the scope of freeware.

IS Freeware

Rain/Rain 2.0: This program for Windows 95/98 installs custom CPU drivers for newer, incompatible CPUs, such as a Pentium MMX or newer Cyrix to get them to cool off.
G-Speed: Free antigravity racing game by MaskedBear.
BattleMech Designer: Used to create 'Mech builds for various versions of the Battletech tabletop game.
Winamp (Pre-Web3 diaspora)/WACUP, XMPlay, etc.: Many media players have been made free throughout the years without backdoor antics.
WinDirStat: Shows you what's taking up the most space so you can quickly take it out.