Wallace paired innovation with integrity
Once I asked Bob Wallace, the software pioneer who died unexpectedly 10 days ago, why he continued to distribute his software as "shareware" rather than selling it over the counter.
"I'm out to make a living, not a killing," he responded.
If only the many beneficiaries of Wallace's trailblazing ways had followed the same notion, the personal-computer industry might have avoided the greed and hubris of the "Internet bubble" — and be in much better health today.
Along with Andrew Fluegelman's PC-Talk and Jim Knopf's (aka Button's) PC-File, Wallace's PC-Write proved early on that people all over the world would voluntarily pay for software if you gave them the opportunity to do so. True, not everyone would pay. But enough would to make a living.
At its peak, PC-Write was a leading word processor, full of authorial features and powerful beyond its modest $25 price. Version 4 was as good a word processor as the MS-DOS standard provided. Through the late 1980s PC-Write generated $2 million to $3 million a year in sales, not a bad number from a volunteer clientele.
Shareware (before Wallace coined the term, it was called "freeware") could be copied and distributed on diskettes. Wallace thought users were the best salespeople and that sharing was the best distribution channel. Users should and would pony up if they liked the software, he reasoned.
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One wonders what might have happened if Napster and Hollywood had drawn on the shareware concept to get digital distribution of music rolling on the Internet. Any pay-to-play mechanism, even voluntary, would have planted the seed for a business model and given honest music lovers a way to avoid being branded pirates.
Soft-spoken, thoughtful and intelligent beyond the geeky "smartness" attributed to a lot of early computer figures, Wallace always saw life in a bigger context than others. In a 1984 interview, he told me about an idea he had for a software networking group.
"The business is growing so fast, and people have lots of ideas with no forum for sharing," he said. Within a few months he had gathered enough people to form the Washington Software Association, which exists today on a far grander scale as the WSA.
In the late 1970s Wallace was active with the Northwest Computer Club and took numerous photos of meetings, including several showing a mop-topped Bill Gates in heated discussion with compatriot programmers.
Wallace joined Microsoft as employee No. 9 on May 1, 1978, in Albuquerque, N.M., when the tiny company specialized in computer languages. He occupies perhaps the marquis position — center, upper row — in the famous "Albuquerque 11" photograph of early Microsoft. There were several different poses, but Wallace's version shows everyone smiling, even the normally solemn Gates and inscrutable Paul Allen. It's a much warmer rendition than the "official" pose distributed by Microsoft.
At 53, Wallace is the first of the gang to pass away, a sobering reminder of time's inexorable march even for history's chosen. But his uniquely thoughtful contributions form a timeless legacy.
"When it came to the truthfulness of a client, you never had to worry with Bob," said Jonathan Feil, a Seattle software attorney and friend of Wallace's. "He was a man of highest integrity."
Truth ... integrity ... honesty. Not terms readily associated today with the software business — or the business landscape in general. With Wallace's passing we are reminded that a person's legacy ultimately rests more on principle and example than on how much money, fame or power he or she accumulated.
Paul Andrews is a free-lance technology writer and co-author of "Gates," a biography of the Microsoft chairman. He can be reached at pandrews@seattletimes.com.