How I got permission to post VisiCalc (1999)

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12 pointsbeefhash2 comments

What I learned from this: modern copyright is so bizarre that to just post a copy of a prorgam online legally requires superhuman levels of patience, willingness to jump through hoops, unusual levels of corporate continuity for the tech field, and insiders championing your cause.

Or you could just take 1/10th the luck and time and energy and apply it to Archive Team projects and get 10x the results...

It's an interesting tale that unfortunately wouldn't work these days.

Dan Bricklin is a legend, but he's also a relic of when I used to write stuff that was stuff I had wrote, these days it's always a ladderwork based on other peoples libraries, middleware etc.

VisiCalc did rock, though.

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