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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.
he didn't get rich from such a famous piece of industry starting software?
lets give him a dollar
The source and engine are also available for Numbler, a collaborate spreadsheet similar to google spreadsheet.
you can get the source and play with it at http://code.google.com/p/numbler/. We haven't made a formal announcement of this yet so the docs are still quite raw.
I loved this... his web site includes a downloadable VisiCalc binary from 1981. It's 27 KB large (smaller than most web images, he points out) and it's a pretty powerful piece of software. Still runs on my modern dual core system, talk about longevity. Wow. All the Flash and Visual Basic in the world can't make me forget how awesome and elegant some older software is. I started out by writing in assembler myself
I only wish good ideas and good engineering had more to do with making a fortune than they do. Don't get me wrong, it does happen, and perhaps more in the US than anywhere else. But still, most of the money normally goes to whoever already has enough money to advance the innovator a paycheck so they can develop the idea. (Of course engineering wage slavery still beats pushing a plow 9 times out of 10!)
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.
Mr Bricklin's site also has an explaination of why VisiCalc wasn't patented: http://www.bricklin.com/patenting.htm In short, it just wasn't how things were done then, and the lawyer didn't think he could pull it off.
I'm not exactly sure how they came to that conclusion. I worked in one of the first retail home computer software stores and we had tons of customers come in and say "I need/want Visicalc. What computer should I buy?" An apple II was seldome the recomendation. We sold Atari 400/800s, apples, commodore pets and I think most of the time we recommended a TRS-80 if their needs was strictly business with Visicalc.
And we sold a ton of Visicalcs. If Dan couldn't get rich it is because he spent the profits poorley. Not because they were not there.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
If he had patented (which, bizarrely, is allowed for software in the US), then neither Apple's nor IBM's PCs would have taken off. The combination of Apple and Visicalc got PCs into most businesses. Later, IBM and Lotus 1-2-3 got PCs into all businesses. So as far as the PC is concerned, Visicalc was the killer app.
Visicalc led to Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus 1-2-3 became ubiquitous, though sorely needed improvements, which led to Quattro. Which was too fast and could exchange data with other spreadsheets so that was stopped by Excel and later corrected by OpenOffice.org's Calc. OOo Calc and a few others even fix some of the calculation errors that have been persistent in Excel functions across many versions and many years.
Patents here would have stifled that progression. Most likely PCs would never have become common in business and homes beyond the occasional hobbyist. Who knows where we would be without the PC revolution? Maybe not even any WWW. But who knows? Maybe it would have come 10 years later and been based around Next, though that too has been in some ways dependent on the success of the Apple ][.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Sure, engineering "innovation" is cool, but engineers are built so that once the "that's cool" flag is set, it is soon forgotten in the zen of the implementation.
Sales and marketing guys who couldn't program "hello world", jump all over the cool idea with branding, marketing, patents, and "market differentiation" and turn it into actual money.
If you are an engineer with new ideas, it would not be a bad idea to align yourself with the "dark forces", if you care about making money from your work.
I, for one, do not begrudge our road-warrior, platinum mile club, twice-divorced sales wonk his high salary, he earns it too.
disclaimer: I am not a sales or marketing type. I see that they often earn more than I, but am old enough to appreciate why.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
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.
The original post is an Apple troll. The standard microcomputer for business from that time was the TRS-80, which was far more successful for business applications (and had a much bigger business application catalog accordingly.) Visicalc was released for both.
The point is that without patents, big companies like Microsoft can easily out muscle and out market little guys with good ideas. With patents, the little guys can win more.
Based on the Robert Kearns intermittent wiper nightmare I think Mr. Bricklin is better off for not getting wrapped up in a spreadsheet patent fiasco. Sounds like he's doing fine financially and has been quite productive over the years.
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
I don't know why every desktop doesn't include a basic spreadsheet superclass, since it is so common in so many different kinds of apps. I'd expect by now that the OS would include a basic SQL storage/query engine, an app that hooks code and data objects to a 3D array, and a GUI for sheets. And a basic text editor. The original Mac was complete with those apps in 1984, even though only the patterns (not the code, certainly not the source) were available to every app. Over 20 years later, and users and developers still have to roll our own, and use inconsistent GUIs, interfaces, APIs, data models, and just plain redundant bloat.
People like Bricklin who kicked off all this "personal computing" made a lot more changes in the right direction with a lot less technology, for even fewer people, than we've done in the generation since we inherited their vision.
--
make install -not war
From the license agreement page that everyone reads (I'm sure) before downloading it:
Onoes! You mean if I install this program I can no longer use my... um... paper ledger? (Really, what else would I have upgraded from?)
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
Though I can understand why people get paid to say or write that, I find it difficult to accept that anyone actually believes that. It doesn't work that way even in theory:
Maybe just maybe Bricklin could have gotten the concept of electronic spreadsheet accepted by the USPTO. But getting there to the initial product, he would have tread on dozens of patents utilized countless algorithms and concepts from Computer Science curricula and industry best practices which are owned by portfolio companies. They would have eaten his lunch even with cross licensing.
Here's a quote from your leader around 1994:
'nuff said.Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.