Slashdot Mirror
Interview With Spreadsheet Creator
Gammu writes "Dan Bricklin helped create one of the most successful computer metaphors of all time, and he never got rich. He, and another engineer, started Personal Software to create the computer spreadsheet VisiCalc, which established the Apple II as the standard microcomputer for small businesses and attracted the attention of IBM to the market. Josh Coventry recently interviewed Bricklin about VisiCalc and his newer projects, including a Wiki-style spreadsheet." WikiCalc was discussed back in February on Slashdot and reviewed by NewsForge in March. NewsForge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
This is not an example of Microsoft screwing someone. It is an example for the anti-patent free software crowd on what happens when you don't patent something: a big company like Microsoft can come in and do it better (or at least market it better) than you. They make billions and you don't.
People who have talent don't get rich.
People who organize talent get rich.
Since most of us on slashdot are havers, rather than organizers, we sense this as some sort of deep injustice, or dark irony. But really it's just a practical necessity. The organizers are the ones with the power to determine who gets paid what, so they naturally pay themselves the most. If you want that money, then become an organizer instead.
Not to diminish your post, but from my understanding Visicalc is one of the applications Microsoft uses as a baseline for backwards-compatibility testing. The fact that it still runs in 2006 is more a testament to the efforts of OS designers than the original program-- the original program only had to follow all the published specs of the time.
Comment of the year
Imagine if patenting software was the thing back then.
Maybe in a home computer store you were selling more cheaper ones. (By current standards, corrected for inflation, all these were extremely expensive.) I did a lot of temp jobs in banks during the immediate pre-IBM-PC era, and the only personal computers I ever saw were Apple II. They were usually controlled by ubergeek types (before the term was invented) when most people who had computer access had terminals to the IBM mainframes. These people had the knowledge that Visicalc would help them and the clout to get someone to pay for the computer, and the same logic about familiarity and price that led to rooms full of IBM-brand equipment would lead to buying Apple for PCs at that time. Just one person's sample, but I did work a lot of different locations over several summers.