OT: SCO Forum

[Bill Campbell]

On Fri, Jun 23, 2006, Mike Schwartz (PC Support) wrote:
>> Other than that, nobody I talk to seems to authoritatively know who owns
>> the rights to the old Softa one at this time.  Considered contacting
>> FourGen and seeing if they can help with a native version?  It's seeming
>> like your best bet.
>> 
>> mark->
>
>     Try to contact Keith Hanson in Seattle.  Circa 1999, Keith claimed he
>was the author of some of the Menu* products and that he had the "C" source
>code, all the internal development documentation, etcetera and was willing
>to sell it for $10,000.00.  (I don't recall if we discussed MenuMaster,
>MenuEze, MenuMaestro, or any of the other variants.  I would like to know
>the exact history, but I believe that they all had different authors.)
>
>     As I recall, Keith said Softa/Fourgen company (per se) didn't write the
>Menu* line of products themselves, although Keith, Gordon and all of these
>guys were all loosely tied together somehow.
>
>     I would like to see somebody (like Gordon) post a history exactly how
>Softa was developed and who was involved, starting from the days when these
>guys worked at Radio Shack Stores and/or knew each other from the Seattle
>Computer Club(s).  I've also heard several rumors about how Softa became
>FourGen and how they migrated away from filePro.

Gordon was probably the least technical of the three founders, Gary
Galliardi, Gordon (last name forgotten), and Lauren West.  Lauren was the
tech guy.  Gordon was manager of a very large Radio Shack Computer Center
(RSCC) in the University district of Seattle (Scarecrow Video is now in
their old building).  The Seattle Unix Group's meetings were held in this
RSCC for a while while Gordon was still manager.

The first time I became aware of Gary was when he wrote an article for one
of the computer trade journals about life as a RSCC manager that had a
great cartoon of an RSCC manager in an apron cleaning the bathroom telling
a customer that he had to finish cleaning before he could sell him
something.  I was managing an RSCC in Rockville, Maryland at the time, and
took that into a meeting with Frank Kalinoski, my Regional Manager to help
make my point about staffing.

I met Gary shortly after I moved to the Seattle area in 1983, and, as I
remember, he was one of the early members of the board of directors of the
Seattle Unix Group when was first founded in 1984 (I've been on the board
since the first meeting).  Gary approached me about coming into Softa with
him, Gordon, and Lauren, but I chose to stick with Celestial instead.

...

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at Celestial.COM  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX:            (206) 232-9186  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.
Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts
to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to
be one of the facts that needs altering.
                -- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"