As we who are gray of beard and long of tooth remember, and least we all forget -- in memory of...
...and with a "Tip O' the Hat" to Wikipedia
PC-Talk III wrote:Andrew Fluegelman (presumably died July 6, 1985) is best known as the inventor of what is now known as the shareware business model for software marketing.
He was an attorney, and a leader of the 1970s New Games movement which advocated the development of noncompetitive games.
Shortly after the introduction of the IBM PC he developed PC-TALK, a very popular and successful piece of communications software. He marketed it under a system he called "Freeware," which he characterized as "an experiment in economics more than altruism." Freeware was licensed under terms that encouraged users to make voluntary payments for the software, and allowed users to copy and redistribute the software freely as long as the license terms and text were not altered. He trademarked the term "freeware" in order to retain control of the word's meaning, which ironically had the unintended result of causing other developers to use the substitute term "shareware" in order to avoid infringing the trademark.
Fluegelman edited PC World magazine from its introduction in 1982 until 1985, and MacWorld magazine from its introduction in 1984 until 1985.
In 1985, Fluegelman was diagnosed with cancer. A week later he vanished, and his abandoned car was found at the north end of the Golden Gate bridge near San Francisco.
PC-File wrote:Jim Button (born James Knopf--"knopf" meaning "button" in German) is considered by many to be one of the "fathers" of shareware (so named by fellow software veteran Peter Norton). He released his first program, PC-File (a flat file database), in late 1982 as "user supported software". He has been quoted as saying this expression not only reflected the optional payment model, but also that comments from users drove the development of later releases.
He collaborated with the late PC-Talk (communications software) developer Andrew Fluegelman to adopt similar names (PC-File was originally "Easy-File"), and prices, for their initial shareware offerings; they also agreed to mention each other's products in their program's documentation. Fluegelman referred to this distribution method as "freeware".
The late Bob Wallace, a few months later (early 1983), followed suit, coining the term "shareware" for his similarly marketed product, PC-Write, a word processor.
Of the three founders of shareware, Button is the only one still alive, despite having a near-death experience in 1992, when his heart stopped beating.
PC-Write wrote:Bob Wallace (died 2003), was the ninth Microsoft employee, inventor of the term shareware, creator of the word processing program PC-Write, founder of the software company Quicksoft and a "online drug guru" who devoted much time and money into the research of psychedelic drugs.
His home in Marin was the location used in many of the Friday night dinners.
Bob was noted in ending his Usenet posts with the phrase "Just my opinion".
