Developer Peter Tattam is getting his comeuppance - finally! - for some software he wrote in the early 90's that was instrumental in creating the WWW we know today. Link here


My own very first personal computer was a laptop of dubious origins that I bought from a line cook at a restaurant I was working at in Indianapolis back in the mid 90's. It was small, with a black-and-white screen, no battery life left, a 386sx CPU backed by a whole 2 Megs of RAM, and a whopping 40 Megabyte hard drive. Less computing power than my current 5 year old phone, in short. :)

With much patience and a stack of floppies about 14 deep, I was able to install DOS 6.22 onto the drive, and follow that up with Windows 3.1 in order to have a graphical user interface. I found a 2400 baud modem and cable at a local used computer store, and soon I had that WII-sized modem box hooked into my laptop, and found a whole 'nother world of people out there, others who were tech junkies. It was the start of a whole new life for me...

I was the guy who had read "Computers for Dummies" cover to cover, and found it interesting, even fun, to read. But my knowledge at the time was incredibly lacking, and without being able to stand on the shoulders of giants, I would never have been able to get online and have the experiences that catapulted me into a career. Peter Tattam was one of those giants. His Trumpet Winsock software allowed me, a complete dummy novice, to be able to make my computer talk to other computers.

Recently, someone noticed that Peter was still around, and on inquiring, it came to light that that elemental piece of software which so many of us used, never really made much of a profit for him. It was freely distributed as "shareware", which means you can use the software for free, only paying for it if you liked it and used it. At the time, it cost $25, and it had taken me over a month to raise the $125 that the computer system cost me. I didn't have two spare nickels to rub together, much less $25, but Peter's generosity of sharing his work so widely made it possible for me to use the software that would change my life.

So, like so many other geeks of my generation, I'm in the donation queue about 15 years later, sending to Peter at long last the pittance that he asked for, for a priceless piece of his work that changed my life.

Thank you, Peter. :)