The 1985 Andrew Fluegelman Interview

When the summer of 1981 began, Andrew Fluegelman was a successful book packager and former corporate attorney in Marin County, California, and had never used a computer.

Then he bought one of the first IBM PCs and taught himself to program in BASIC.

Next, he wrote a seminal piece of communications software which helped many people get online for the first time. Rather than attempting to sell the software in a conventional manner, he distributed it for free, asking for a $35 payment from people who found it useful. Many, many people sent him checks via snail mail, thereby establishing the business model which he called freeware. (It later became better known as shareware, and was a precursor of today’s “freemium” model.)

While continuing in the software business, Fluegelman started writing about computers. He became the founding editor of both PC World and Macworld, two of the most successful computer magazines of all time.

In short, Andrew Fluegelman did a lot to shape the tech industry, after having done such other interesting things as serving as managing editor of the CoEvolution Quarterly (a spinoff of the Whole Earth Catalog), and popularizing the non-competitive New Games which I played in high school.

I never met Fluegelman, but he means a lot to me. I eventually had the honor of holding the same job he had originated when I became the editor of PC World. I’ve written about him before — and about the Andrew Fluegelman Foundation, founded by his friend and business partner David Bunnell, which awards laptops to college-bound students from challenging backgrounds in his honor.

And just recently, I discovered a lengthy interview with him published in 1985 in MicroTimes, a free magazine distributed in California. The Internet Archive, bless it, has a scanned version of the issue in its remarkable collection of computer magazines. It was preserved by Mary Eisenhart, an editor at the publication, and scanned by Jason Scott of the invaluable Textfiles; I’m republishing it here, based on the Archive’s full-text version.

Anyone interested in the history of computers, software, and computer magazines would find this interview a good read no matter what the circumstances of its publication. It covers the invention of freeware/shareware; the addictive joy of programming (“I abandoned all bodily functions for about a month”); the early reaction to the Mac; the takeover of PC Magazine by Ziff-Davis, which led to the founding of PC World; Fluegelman’s belief in the power of computers as a force for good; and much more.

But the interview is particularly poignant for a deeply regrettable reason. It was published in MicroTimes’ May 1985 issue. On July 6 of that year, Fluegelman was seen for the last time. A week after that, his car was found parked at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, apparently with a suicide note inside. When I talk to his friends about it, they still sound stunned, more than thirty years later.

I’m stunned, too — and amazed by the fact that Fluegelman accomplished all he did in the industry in just four years.

In the interview, he mentions the ideas he had driving across that bridge, and speaks of looking forward to seeing what his life might be like at the age of 60 and 80. It’s both inspiring and terribly sad — a good recap of what he had accomplished so far, and full of optimism for the road ahead. Here it is, in its entirety.

Andrew Fluegelman: PC-Talk and Beyond

By Dennis Erokan and Mary Eisenhart

One suspects immediately that Andrew Fluegelman never stays bored for very long. Articulate and animated, he conveys a lively sense of interest in whatever new possibilities might crop up.

Consider the last few years. In 1981 Fluegelman, a book publisher by trade, got his first computer. One thing having led to another, he became, in fairly short order, the creator of the critically acclaimed telecommunications program PC-Talk, the instigator of the revolutionary and highly successful Freeware marketing concept, and co-founder of PC World and Macworld magazines. These days he’s spending more time exploring new avenues of communications software programming and publishing, though he remains, for the moment at least, reticent about specific works-in-progress.

For his own variation on the theme of Success In The Computer World, thoughts on the PC-vs.- Macintosh controversy, and general reflections on the developing scene, read on.

How did you get into computers?

I was in the publishing business. I was an independent book publisher, and I had done about fifteen different books on all sorts of different topics — football and sushi and travel and photography — and back in 1982 decided it would be fun to do a book about computers for writers. I got a contract from Doubleday to do the book, and I went shopping for a personal computer in the summer of 1981.

The good fortune was that, as I was getting really close to making my buying decision, IBM announced its PC. I took one look at it and I just had this gut feeling — “This is what I want!’ And I started playing with it.

I believe I got one of the first thousand machines, and at that time there was no software that ran on it at all, not even a word processor. So all I could do was start programming in BASIC. I spent the first month doing that, and I loved it.

Had you ever done anything like that before?

Never touched a computer before in my life.

What kind of programs were you doing?

Well; the first thing I did was — I placed the order for the PC and then I went on a trip back East for a couple of weeks. And you know how when you’re on the road you read a lot, so I took with me a book on programming in BASIC. And so I spent my first two weeks learning to program without a computer at all. That was a great help, because it really forced me to get my head into it.

And I got David Ahl’s Book of Computer Games, and I said, “This is just what I want to do!’ I typed it all in. It took me a day to get the bugs out and get the thing to run. And as soon as I saw the program running I immediately started thinking, “Well, gee, I’d really like it to add up the scores, and say this, and make a little noise. . !’ I looked through the book, and I’d say, “Oh, there’s something I could use. . .what happens if I stick it in there?”

I’m a real believer in the Berlitz method of programming. Which is:
you learn how to say “Please pass the salt,’ you look in the dictionary and look up the word for “pepper,’ stick it in there and say “Please pass the pepper!’ and by God, someone gives you the pepper. And you know you’re making progress. Purely trial and error.

I liked it a lot. I abandoned all bodily functions for about a month.

Eventually a word processor came out, and we started working on the book. I had a co-author who at the time was using a NorthStar Horizon — a CP/M machine. When we started the book we had this fantasy that we’d each write half the book and send chapters back and forth, we’d edit them, we’d really use the technology. It was very much a part of the process of doing the book.

And I discovered to my horror that the only communications software that was available for the PC was written by IBM and only allowed your computer to swap files with other PC’s or IBM mainframes. This was after I’d had the computer for a couple of months. And I took one look at the code, to see whether I could rewrite it, and it was just hopeless.

So the next morning I sat down, and started out with 10 lines of BASIC code to write a communications program. And in the same way, I got that working, I said, “Gee, I’d really like to do this, and I’d like to do that, and we should have a dialing directory, and we should have some macros…’ — and I kept just adding to it for my own use.

We eventually typeset the book using the program that I wrote. In the process I gave it to a lot of my friends, and they started using it...And at the time it was the only program that let you do these things on the IBM PC — this was in the early spring of ’82. And inevitably one of my friends said, “You know, you really ought to publish that!’

If I hadn’t been in the publishing business for eight years, I would have gone ahead on the traditional route — find a publisher, royalties — but I’d been through all that, and I’d seen all the pitfalls and all the ways things can get derailed. And this was kind of a new medium, and I was still very exhilarated by it. And I said, having had all this fun, I just can’t go the same publishing route that I’ve gone before.

And the other thing was the whole issue of copy-protection. I heard these stories that people would invest months on devising copy-protection schemes and then in three hours some kid in San Diego figured it out. And I was still just learning how to program the computer — there was no way I was going to figure out how to do copy- protection.

At the time KQED [the San Francisco public TV station] was having its pledge drive, and they talked about user-supported television. And in a flash — I was driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, which I think is a power point, I have more inspirations driving across the Golden Gate Bridge
[laughs] — and as I was pulling into the toll plaza the word “freeware” popped into my head. And this whole idea of user-supported software: pass it around, don’t make people pay for it, let them try it…

This was the beginning of Freeware. And I said, I’ll just set it out there, encourage people to use it. If they like it, I’ll ask them to send me some money. Because I really had enough of myself and my ego involved in this package that I wanted some acknowledgement from the world that this thing was worthwhile.

So I sent out the first version of the program that way. I put some notices on The Source and CompuServe: I’ve got this program, I wrote it, it’ll do this and this, and if you want a copy —

I don’t even want to have published what my original offer was, because people will inevitably read that and think that’s the way you can get it now.

But I said, it’s available for free, and if you like it, send me the money. And even if you don’t like it, still make copies for your friends, because maybe they’ll like it and send some money.

The response was really overwhelming. I almost got driven out of business filling orders. At the time I was still producing books, and software programming was my own late-night thing. And suddenly I was standing there all day filling orders and licking stamps and sending things out, and I had to hire someone to start doing that. It was literally driving me out of business with all this response. I was totally unprepared for it.

The other thing I learned was that while I had written the program to work very well in my own situation, once you start sending software out into the world, you start hearing about people with all sorts of crazy circumstances that you haven’t anticipated at all. I think if I had tried to publish this first version of the program commercially, people would ‘ve reacted very negatively. But they didn’t, because I’d sent it out in this unrestricted way. So people would write back and say, “This is great, but why don’t you add this, why don’t you try this?” In many cases people even helped me reprogram to deal with their situations. And I ended up calling that “freeback” instead of feedback, because it was really getting this free support back from the community.

Were you getting any money?

Yes. I was getting money. I remember on the first day I got a
check in the mail, and I just couldn’t believe it.

After about a year I collected some of the more ambitious suggestions that people were making and came out with a new version of the program, which is PC-Talk III, which is what I’m currently distributing.

I support two people whose business is just to support this program, fill orders, and mainly provide advice to users. Our highest cost of doing business is giving user support.

How many copies of PC-Talk do you think are out there?

It’s very hard for me to say. I know that when we recently had a PC World poll in which people voted for their favorite software program in different categories, PC-Talk was rated just below Crosstalk and SmartCom, which are the two major commercial packages. I would guess that there’s about 100,000 copies of those out there, so I’ve got to figure that there are about that many of mine out there as well.

I’d also guess that somewhere between one and five out of every ten people using the program have actually sent me money for it. When I go to PC shows, I always run into people and they say, “Hey, I owe you $35!”

But it’s definitely been successful, and I never really anticipated that it would work out that way.

What does it do?

It’s a program for the IBM personal computer and compatibles that allows you to hook your computer up to a modem and send information to another computer, and receive information from another computer. It has a lot of convenience features, which really is what most communications packages do; it has a dialing directory, it lets you set up various parameters based on who you’re calling, it lets you program characters and commands that you normally type.

The amount of code that’s doing the work is tiny compared to the amount of code that’s just making life pleasant for you.

How important are telecommunications to you personally?

I tend to think of two kinds of people in the world: those who have the ability to telecommunicate with each other and those who don’t. And I’ve run into it very graphically in the publishing world from whence I came.

You just quickly assume that if someone anywhere in the country has written something you can get it instantly on your computer and be able to massage it and process it and do what you want. And the thought of having to have someone mail you a manuscript and then having it arrive on paperand having to then deal with it somehow — it really seems like two different worlds.

It’s hard for me to imagine dealing with information unless you have the ability to ship it around.

What kind of computers do you use now?

Personally I have a couple of PC’s that’re all tricked out with lots of memory and hard disks, and I have a 512K Macintosh that I personally prefer to use for writing. I find that the lack of a fan and the smaller hardware make it a more pleasant writing tool.

For really moving data and information around, the PC just has a lot of muscle, and it’ll be awhile before the Macintosh does that. So I use them both.

So how did PC World and Macworld come about? There you are with Freeware, and now what happens?

Well, just at the time all that was going on, PC magazine got started here in San Francisco by David Bunnell. I had actually met him a few years earlier; he came to me with a book idea, and at the time my computer horizons were very dim, and we never quite clicked on that.

I ended up writing, for the first issue of PC magazine, a review of Easy Writer, which was the first word processor for the PC. And that became a kind of notorious review.. . .

You panned it?

I did pan it; it deserved panning. But it was kind of a case of “the Emperor has no clothes!’ It was a field that I was totally new in, no one knew who I was, I didn’t know anybody, I just took this program and I said, “This is terrible,” [laughs] “it’s not letting me get any work done at all!” And I wrote it up…

It had impact?

Well, eventually IBM recalled the program and fixed it up.

So I started writing reviews, and I enjoyed that too. I found that —again, having been in book publishing for a long time, where you’re trying to define your audience, you say, “Well, we’ll do a book about sushi; now, who’s really going to be reading this?” When you’re writing about computers, you really know pretty much who your readers are. At least they’re defined by the kinds of problems they’re dealing with. I found that really liberating and exciting, to be able to write for an audience and know exactly how you could focus on them.

So I enjoyed doing reviews, and I became an associate editor at PC magazine for about the eight months that it was in San Francisco. Then there was a whole flap when they got bought by Ziff-Davis; we started PC World and at the time David asked me to become editor-in-chief. Which I did.

Why did you all feel you had to leave Ziff-Davis?

Well, that’s happened so long ago now that.. . .

Was it just working for a big company?

No, it wasn’t just working for a big company. It was the way that Ziff-Davis represented themselves and treated certain people and dealt with what people believed were commitments and representations. It had to do with the way we felt, the way things were seen.

Do you look back in regret at your collective decision not to work with those guys?

No. Not at all.

Do you look back?

Occasionally. [Laughs] Not for long.

The other exciting thing that happened was, right after we started PC World, about four months later, we went down to Apple and we ended up seeing the Macintosh. And we decided that this was a very exciting computer, and we wanted to do another magazine about it.

How did it come about, given the rivalry between IBM and Apple, that you were suddenly at Apple looking at their newest, most incredible product?

Well, for one, we never had any kind of inside relationship with IBM. I don’t know of anyone who does. And we also had a very independent stance vis-a-vis IBM. Witness the review of their program — it was crummy, and we said so.

So I think that we always aligned ourselves, and most closely identified, with users of computers, looking at their interests. And when you see a new computer coming that promises to enhance the way people can use computers, make it more efficient, more fun — that’s what really appealed to us.

It’s easy to like the people at Apple, so it was easy to get into that relationship, but I know for myself and for David, who’s been involved in the field for so long — we really believe in computers, we really believe that they can be a force for good. And it does get to be that kind of emotional feeling.

So anyone who would be putting out a truly good product, that would be something that would excite us.

What do you mean by the statement that “computers can be a force for good”?

Well, I think that the easier it is for people to express themselves, and to share their views with others, that’s got to be a good democratic force. It makes it easier for us all to publish our ideas, if you use “publish” in the greatest sense.

It also, hopefully, makes it easier for us to assemble the information we need to form our own views. There are many days when I feel that the quantity of information available to us maybe clouds our ability to make our own views — we spend so much time collecting it and deciding how we’re going to file it away. But I know the intellectual excitement that the machine has caused for me; it’s really been a rejuvenation. And anything that gets you that pumped up has got to be something that you can use in a good way.

And I also think that the people who do get excited about computers and involved in all this are almost uniformly intelligent, interesting people.

One of the surprises for me — before I got involved I had this image of the computer nerd, and being closeted away and all that. I never have been as socially involved, as interconnected with as many different kinds of people, as when I started getting involved with computers. So I think that’s another force, the ability to make connections. To get on line, talk with someone on the other side of the country, not have to worry about what they look like, how they talk or how they dress, or whatever, and really let their ideas come through. And I hope we keep sharing that.

In publishing Macworld, how have you been affected by the marketing of Macintosh: the software, the various upgrades?

We’re actually ahead of our projections of where we thought the magazine would be. There are more companies with products, advertising more products; we have a great reader base, they’re loyal, they like what we’re doing.

I think we provide a service. I think that the Mac itself is due for some criticism. There are some things that don’t work great: the way the files are handled on the machine is not great. And we’ve come out and said that, and hopefully we can try and be a force that can accelerate the process of
improving the machine. It seems like you have to walk a fine line: on the one hand you have to criticize, but you don’t want to slam the product so hard that people throw the magazine down in disgust and say, “Forget it, I’m sick of Macintosh.”

Do you have to worry about alienating the reader from the machine?

I think we definitely have to worry about it. It’s something that we’re consciously aware of. Having made the decision to publish Macworld, we’re not going to come out with our premiere issue and say, “Well, it’s a crummy computer, not worth your money!’ That is inconsistent with our stance of being a magazine to support the people who have bought into this system.

I think that the Mac generally has enjoyed a honeymoon period among the press, and not just among us who have a real connection to it; among the press in general, among users, among software developers. There is some quality to the machine that people respond to, and I think that they have gone out of their way, a little bit, to give it a chance to develop, because they saw the potential there.

Do you see the potential there?

Absolutely. I’m a real fan of the Macintosh. It’s very exciting.

Do you see a difference between Macintosh people and IBM people? Users?

One would be tempted to say yes. And I think I probably would say yes.

The cliche of “artistic types go for the Macintosh, power users go for the IBM”?

I think that it’s always dangerous to base too much on cliches. But I think that it does hold up. And I know of some of my PC friends who instantly got intrigued with the Macintosh, and some of my PC friends who still kind of ho-hum about it. People said it’s more of a right-brain machine and all that — I think there is some truth to that. I think there is something to dealing in a graphical interface and a more kinetic interface — you’re really moving information around, you’re seeing it move as though it had substance. And you don’t see that on a PC. The PC is very much of a conceptual machine; you move information around the way you move formulas, elements on either side of an equation. I think there’s a difference.

It’s been interesting — when you’re involved in this business one of the questions you always get asked is — your old friends come out of the woodwork and eventually they say, “I’m thinking about buying a computer. What kind should I get?” And it’s been interesting for me over the past two or three years to note the order of my friends who have come out of the woodwork asking me that question, and what my response was two years ago as opposed to this year. Two years ago all I could say was, “Well, you should probably get a PC!’ And now that I have the ability to say, “Well, you ought to get a Macintosh,” the people who are getting in touch with me are the people that I genuinely would say it to. The time had to come when there was a Macintosh before they would ask me that question.

I think the most important thing is to realize that computers are tools, that unless you want to become involved with becoming an expert programmer, the main thing that a computer provides you is the ability to express yourself. And if it’s letting you do that, if you now have hands on those tools, then you can be a force for good out in the world, doing the things that you used to do, that you’re still doing — representing your own ideas, not changing your persona to suddenly become a “computer person!’

And I think that may be the advantage of Macintosh.

How much time do you put into Macworld as opposed to PC World?

When we put together Macworld magazine I stepped away from PC World, took three other people from the staff, and we produced it behind closed doors. It was kind of our Manhattan Project. There was a period of four to five months where I was totally involved with getting the first issue of Macworld out. When that happened last January [1984], we promoted or moved some editors within our organization and I became editor- in-chief. I was involved in making sure that all the editorialproducts proceeded, had energy; so I was spending my time about 50–50.

This past January, I changed my title to editorial director, which is a consulting position that freed me of having the day-to-day management responsibility for running the 30 or so people in the two editorial departments. It’s exclusively concerned with editorial direction of the two magazines, development of new projects, kind of keeping us on course.

Are there new projects?

We’re continuing to look at everything that seems like it might be interesting. We’ve had two successes so far, and I think that we feel it’s important to be able to duplicate those. We’re certainly not hungry to start something new just for the sake of doing something new.

The other thing I’m doing now is using some of the free time personally available to me to do some more programming and to take the communications area a little bit farther. The next obvious thing for us to do is come out with a better communications program.

Us meaning PC-Talk?

Right.

Does that mean you’re severing some of your relation with the magazines?

Only in terms of time. I really just made sure that I had more personal time to do projects. I’m still as involved in the direction of PC World and Macworld.

Do you see yourself becoming a publisher of software, or is that
something you wouldn’t be interested in?

I think it’s something I would want to get into. It’s been interesting to realize that many of the experiences you’ve had in bringing books together can have their counterpart in software publishing.

Should we print a P.O. box for you, in case any of our readers are interested?

I don’t know whether I’m ready to open up my doors yet, because when I was a book packager I spent about 25% of my time listening to people with ideas for new products.

I think if some spectacular ideas came along I’d consider them. I would hope that within nine or ten months I would be in a position to more seriously consider them.

It’s great to go along for 40 years and still find your life changing and new things happening. It makes you look forward to what’s going to happen when you’re 60, what’s going to happen when you’re 80.