from Hacker News

The WinRAR approach

by frizlab on 5/21/25, 5:38 AM with 103 comments

• by jwitthuhn on 5/25/25, 9:07 AM

  The DAW Reaper also uses a similar approach and for that alone I would highly recommend anyone interested in audio production give it a try.

  Everyone else in the industry uses online activation. Whenever they take those servers down you lose your ability to install and use the software you bought.

  With programs like WinRar and Reaper, even if the company producing it disappears tomorrow and takes all their servers with them, you can continue to make full use of the software you bought in 'free trial' mode and that is huge.

• by quietbritishjim on 5/25/25, 4:17 AM

  > If you're familiar with WinRAR, the Windows file compression tool, you'll know where this is going. WinRAR became infamous for offering a "30-day trial" that never actually expired.

  I remember Paint Shop Pro being even more famous for this. I certainly got to day five hundred and something of the 30 day trial. I seem to remember an interview with the creator where he was grateful even to users that didn't pay because they helped sort knowledge of it. Sadly, I think later versions made it a harder limit.

• by zerr on 5/25/25, 6:18 AM

  Don't forget that WinRAR comes from 90s eastern European/xUSSR cultural background, where nobody paid for IP, for something that could be copied. Nobody would use it otherwise. I'm pretty sure even the authors used "pirated" copies of OS/compilers to produce WinRAR.

• by lifthrasiir on 5/25/25, 3:23 AM

  It is not about goodwill; it is more about making laypersons familiar with the software so that corporate licenses can be sold. This has been a very much established BM for sharewares.

• by aerzen on 5/25/25, 9:53 AM

  Immich recently introduced a similar pricing model - you can buy a license, but there are no major features locked if you don't.

  https://buy.immich.app/

  I think that this model is a great indicator that the software/content distributed is of high quality. Because no user will purchase this before even using it, but only after they form a opinion that it deserves the financial support.

• by LeoPanthera on 5/25/25, 2:47 AM

  (I know this article isn't actually about rar, but...)

  It's surprising that anyone still cares about the rar file format. lzma, as used in .7z, has superior compression, and neither are particularly fast so it's not about performance.

  7-Zip is BSD licensed and has a native Windows UI.

• by Waterluvian on 5/25/25, 11:31 PM

  But I don’t think this is actually the WinRAR approach, which I think is much more about getting money from companies whose compliance, legal, licensing, etc. cannot tolerate the idea that they’re technically violating a license like that.

• by IncreasePosts on 5/25/25, 2:25 AM

  Does anyone have any estimates for how much money WinRAR has made over the years, and for whom? Is it just a one man shop, a big company with multiple developers, or what?

• by jimbob45 on 5/25/25, 5:51 AM

  Protip: there are some kickass WinRAR themes out there.

  https://www.rarlab.com/themes.htm

• by sgarland on 5/25/25, 12:36 PM

  I thought this was going to discuss how WinRAR remains a tiny executable, single-digit MB, in an age of bloat.

  Still a good post, but not what I thought it would be.

• by TowerTall on 5/25/25, 9:14 AM

  Isn't the WinRAR approach more that you pay to avoid having to press "OK" to a dialog everytime the application starts?

• by aquir on 5/25/25, 7:24 AM

  WinRAR is one of the tools what I'm missing a lot since I've moved to MacOS. The other one is Total Commander...

• by Daviey on 5/25/25, 9:15 AM

  I seem to remember Winzip did the same thing, long before windows natively supported Zip. It became an auto-reflex to hit "Continue" .. So much so that they responded by randomly swapping the Buy/Activate button and "Continue Trial" on each startup.

• by phil21 on 5/25/25, 2:02 PM

  As a teen coming up in the industry I always said I’d pay for WinRAR once I “made it”.

  Happy to say I’ve paid for more than a few copies for myself and friends! It’s the small little things like this that make the grind worth it to me.

  Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.

• by einpoklum on 5/25/25, 9:04 AM

  > WinRAR became infamous for offering a "30-day trial" that never actually expired. Instead of cutting off access or locking features, it simply asked users to consider purchasing it if they found it useful. It ran on goodwill

  No, it did not. It ran on annoyance. If you wanted to avoid having to dismiss the "30-day trial" dialog on startup, you needed to pay. And some people paid. I'm not saying that it was immoral, it was just... annoying. Plus, for most (?) of WinRAR's existence, you could really do very well with alternatives such as the 7zip utility - www.7-zip.org , that was perfectly free-as-in-beer.

• by ed_mercer on 5/25/25, 4:17 AM

  LGR covered this extensively https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7W6hv4kcvg

• by tealpod on 5/25/25, 9:43 AM

  I follow similar principal for https://Watermark.ink Almost every feature on watermark.ink site is free.

• by fuomag9 on 5/25/25, 6:59 AM

  This basically worked for me as well, forklift on macOS has basically an infinite trial but will constantly ask you to buy it

  I just bought it yesterday :D

• by bithavoc on 5/27/25, 12:38 AM

  Pulumi is sorta like this, very generous free tier, so DevOps fall in love with it easily.

• by bigmace on 5/25/25, 2:42 AM

  My company doesn't even pay for WinRAR. Their approach is pretty awful, haha.