Eulogy for Bob Wallace by Dan Gillmor

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Sun Sep 29 20:50:00 2002

On Sun, 29 Sep 2002, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
> Dan Gillmor wrote of Bob Wallace in his September 28 column in the San
> Jose Mercury:
> Bob Wallace, personal-computer software pioneer, philanthropist and
> activist, died last week in San Rafael. He had a too-short life, but
> accomplished more than most.
>
> Wallace was 53 when he died, apparently of natural causes, according to
> the Marin County coroner's preliminary report.

Later adjusted to pneoumonia. When he was about 16, he had a collapsed
lung. I wonder if there is a connection?


> He was one of the first Microsoft employees,
Ninth employee, but first to leave with stock.


> but left in the early 1980s to start his own company,
> Quicksoft, which sold a popular word processor, PC-Write.

He wrote PC-Write before he started his company. One of his earlier name
choices before Quicksoft, was "Cimarron Software". Later, he told me that
he had found that he could not do both running the company AND
program. He tried hiring programmers; when that didn't work out, he sold
the company and worked as a programmer for his new owner.

> He may be best known for his early contributions to the genre of software
> that became called "shareware"-- a marketing method in which people would

He was the one who came up with that name. An earlier variant was
"commission shareware"


> buy diskettes with free-to-try software on them, or download it, and then
> let them buy it if they liked it. He had qualms about the commercial
> software industry, and once told the New York Times, "My philosophy is
> that I want to make a living, not a killing."
>
> Wallace worked, in college and afterward, with some of the industry's
> leading lights. He joined Microsoft in 1978.


But he was always enthusiastic about helping anybody and everybody.
He introduced me to computers in the mid 1960s. The first time that I
ever saw any kind of PORTABLE computing was a Silent 700 that he had
brought home one weekend about 1970. Until then, every terminal that I
had used was immovable.


> Wallace's interests ranged beyond the computing world. He was also known
> among drug-policy reformers, and funded medical and social research about
> psychedelic drugs.

By the time of his death, he had sold off his software company, and had
moved to Sebastapol to run a book company dealing with psychedleics.


> Wallace had many admirers, including his former employers at Microsoft
> and technology luminaries in Silicon Valley. "I remeber Bob as a gentle
> soul who was soft-spoken, but creative, persistent and meticulous in his
> programming and thinking," Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen told the Times
> this week.
>
> Rest in peace.
Received on Sun Sep 29 2002 - 20:50:00 BST