The Windows Advanced Multimedia Products (WinAMP) player was released to the world on April 21, 1997. The next year, when its parent company Nullsoft formally incorporated, Winamp became $10 shareware, right? Wrong.
“Nothing ever was broken [if you didn’t pay], there was no feature that was unlocked,” Rob Lord told Ars. “In that year before we were acquired, we were bringing in $100,000 a month from $10 checks—paper checks in the mail!”
https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/07/winamp-how-greatest-mp3-player-undid-itself/
“Nothing ever was broken [if you didn’t pay], there was no feature that was unlocked,” Rob Lord told Ars. “In that year before we were acquired, we were bringing in $100,000 a month from $10 checks—paper checks in the mail!”
https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/07/winamp-how-greatest-mp3-player-undid-itself/