A programmer, Wallace was one of 11 people who in 1978 founded a new company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, called “Micro Soft”. (The company moved to a small town outside Seattle and is now known as “Microsoft”.)
He left the software giant in 1983 to found Quicksoft. His PC-Write program was one of the first professional software packages to be marketed with a new concept called “Shareware”. Copies could be freely made, but if people wanted a manual and support, they had to register it by paying a $75 fee. “If I make enough money to live on, I will continue the experiment,” he said when the program was released. “If not, I will approach software publishers to see if they are interested in marketing a PC-Write II version of the program for me commercially.”
It was a success: Quicksoft eventually grew to $2 million in annual sales, and he sold the company to another early Microsoft employee. His 450 shares of Microsoft weren’t worth much until 1986, when the company went public. After a number of stock splits, the 450 shares became more than 100,000 shares. He died September 20 in San Rafael, Calif., from unknown causes at age 53.