Tucows is an acronym for The Ultimate Collection of Winsock(et) Software, and was formed in Flint, Michigan, USA in the 1990 s. It is now based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The popular website contains hundreds of shareware, freeware, and demo software packages available to download. A system of mirror sites are maintained to allow the traffic to the site to be distributed among several world wide server locations. Despite the name, Tucows contains software for many major computer platforms including Linux and Apple Macintosh, and also older versions of Windows (most notably the Windows 3.x series).

The Tucows mascot is, whimsically, two cows staring at each other. Additionally, their ratings system uses cow icons.

=Business=

Tucows as a freeware download site was created by Scott Swedorski in 1993, and through the early history of the commercial Web was a major destination. The site was bought out by internet service provider Internet Direct in 1995, changed hands several times, and now sells a range of internet services. It still maintains a download archive, although some listing features are only available on a for-pay basis.

==Domain name registrar==

Tucows has become one of the largest domain name registrar, along with Go Daddy, Network Solutions, and eNom. Tucows offers domain names entirely through domain name reseller and is well known for the OpenSRS software platform that they designed (which manages their registrar business, including interaction with domain name registry and end uses) to the extent that the names Tucows and OpenSRS are often informally used interchangeably when referring to Tucows registrar business.

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