I was sad to hear that Bob Wallace died last Friday at the young age of 53.
You may know him as Microsoft employee # 9. He joined the firm in 1978 when it was still in Albuquerque, NM and was called Micro Soft.
He left Microsoft in 1983 (with a ton of $ from stock options) to start his own company Quicksoft with flagship product PC-Write. He used the novel idea of shareware to market the word processor. It was all a gamble. He sold the disk for $10 but encouraged people to copy it and share it and if they used it, to register it by sending him a check. In return they would get a printed manual and help support the next version.
PC-Write was a great product and the nascent industry was ripe for such a concept. Soon Quicksoft had 32 employees and annual revenue of more than $2 million. Not bad for voluntary payments.
This inspired other shareware products to be devloped and this continues to this day. Shareware is a great way for new software developers to get their product to the market and has led to the creation of some of the most useful software in the industry.
Anyone who grew up in the BBS (Bulletin Board System) days of the 80's can relate to the feeling of subscribing to a BBS for the first time and seeing thousands of programs that you could downlaod for free! After downloading 20 word processors, 14 spreadsheets and 45 games you eventually became more selective. But it was a blastand Wallace was a big part of it.
4:33:24 PM 
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