Departures of note

Bob Wallace, the ninth employee of Microsoft, left the company in 1983 to found Quicksoft and distribute his word processor PC-Write using a concept he helped originate: shareware. The software was sold directly to users on a try-before-you-buy basis, and Quicksoft grew to 32 employees with $2 million in annual revenue. Wallace had left Microsoft with stock worth as much as $15 million, which he later used to fund psychedelic research and harm reduction efforts.

Before Microsoft, Wallace worked on the pioneering hypertext File Retrieval and Editing System at Brown University with Andries van Dam and Ted Nelson. He earned a bachelor's degree (1974) and master's degree (1978) in computer science from the University of Washington. At Microsoft, his first project was connecting a computer to an IBM Selectric typewriter to print software manuals, and he was a key developer of TI BASIC. He and Bill Gates were known for practical jokes, including breaking into a construction site and driving bulldozers, at one point almost running over Gates's Porsche.

In 1996, Wallace and his wife Megan Dana-Wallace started Mind Books, a bookstore offering publications on psychoactive plants and compounds. Two years later they founded the Promind Foundation to support scientific research, public education, and harm reduction related to psychedelics. Wallace served on the board of the Heffter Research Institute and financially supported organizations including MAPS, Erowid (providing half of its funding from 2000 to 2002), DanceSafe, and the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics.

Wallace died unexpectedly of pneumonia in San Rafael, California, at age 53. Paul Allen remembered him as 'a gentle soul who was soft-spoken, but creative, persistent and meticulous in his programming and thinking.'