A system and method of identifying a source of a software distribution
between portable computer systems. A user of a first hand held computer
may transfer software, for example operating system extensions,
application programs and data sets etc. to a second hand held computer.
This transfer may occur wirelessly. An identification token which may
identify the source of the software distribution may also be transferred,
and further transferred from the second hand held computer to an "e
commerce" web site in an automatic manner. In this novel manner, the
sources of software distribution of respective files among many hand held
computer users, may be identified to the website. This may result in
wider distribution of both information about available software and the
software itself, and a multi-order multiplication of economic effects in
the hand held industry, while overcoming many deficiencies in the prior
art of software distribution for hand held computers.