Brian P. Dougherty

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Brian P. Dougherty
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Dougherty in 1987, age 31
Born
Brian P. Dougherty

(1956-11-09) November 9, 1956 (age 67)
Berkeley, California, U.S.
Education
  • University of California
, Berkeley
Occupation
  • Businessman
  • programmer
Years active1983-today
Known forFounder and CEO of Berkeley Softworks later renamed to GeoWorks Corporation
Title
list of founded and chaired companies
[1]
  • Founder of Imagic
  • Chairman and CTO of Wink Communications inc.
  • Founder of Airset inc. (formerly Airena inc.)
  • Cofounder and director of GlobalPC inc.

Brian P. Dougherty (born in 1956) was an American Software engineer and businessperson most known for founding Berkeley Softworks in 1983 which would get renamed to GeoWorks Corporation in 1990, that produced the 8-bit GEOS (standing for Graphic Environment Operating System) for the Commodore 64 and PC/GEOS in 1990 for IBM PCs and Compatibles.[2] Brian also founded GlobalPC, Airset and Wink communications working as either chief excecutive officer, CTO or CEO.[1] Brian has been featured in Magazines such as the Commodore Magazine[2], COMPUTE!'S Gazette[3] and the shortlived Official GEOS magazine[4]. While Dougherty was CEO of GeoWorks (Formerly berkeley Softworks), he had approached/been approached by multiple tech giants such as Microsoft and Apple because of his Operating System.[5] Brian studied at the University of California where he graduated with a BS in electrical engineering and computer science.[1]

History

Early career

Dougherty started his career in making video games in 1979 with the help of Matell for their then newly released Intellivision home video game console.[1]

In 1981, 2 years after making games for the intellivision, Brian founded Imagic a private Video game developer & publisher which made games for the Atari 2600, the direct competitor to the intellivision. They would go on to publish games to consoles and computers such as the TRS-80 Color Computer and the IBM PCjr. During the height of Imagic it ran a public fan club dubbed the "Numb Thumb Club" with annual letters being published; only two issues were ever published before it got affected by the video game crash of 1983 which caused its decline.[6] After its downfall the rights to its most popular releases were bought my Activision in the 1980's.[7]

Brian Doughertys first long-time success was by making a simple, 8-bit Graphical user Interface for the Commodore 64, 128, Plus/ 4 and Apple II platforms. The 8-bit version of GEOS (released on March 1986) took advantage of the 1351 mouse or joystick.[2] Originally costing $59.95 ($93.83 today)[2], GEOS included the pre-installed software useful for desktop publishing or education; GeoWrite, a text-editing and word processor application, GeoDraw, a simple drawing program, Geopublish a desktop publishing program made for producing multi-page documents such as newsletters, GeoBASIC, the BASIC programming language with added extensions for graphic design, GeoNET, a low-cost local area networking application used for educational environments that works with the C64 & C128 and allows Apple IIe computers to be networked with each other or with an IBM PC allowing it to be used as a printing or file server, GeoCalc, spreadsheet program for offices, GeoProgrammer, machine language tool which provides programmers with an assembler, linker and debugger and reads directly from geoWrite files and GeoFile, a GEOS-based data filling program in which information is organized and stored in "forms".[3]

Berkeley Softworks used to do a telecommunications service on the commodore-exclusive QuantumLink. Dougherty said in an interview with Gazette that "We really prefer to handle customer service problems through Q-link. At the price we sell our software we really can't afford to have 20 or 50 people in customer service answering the phones". In the first year of release, GEOS was estimated to have sold 450,000 units and Brian expected that over half a million commodore computers would run GEOS.[3]

PC/GEOS

After the success of GEOS, Brian and his team renamed themselves to GeoWorks corporation and started development on a version of GEOS for the IBM PC and compatibles.[8] PC/GEOS originally ran on top of DOS with the GeoWorks desktop software running on top of it.[9] Unlike GEOS for the C64 PC/GEOS had 3 preferences for the user: beginner, intermediate and advanced. Beginner had a simpler User Interface only containing a planner, Address book, solitarire, calculator and notepad and selecting a program would open it full screen.[9] Intermediate had more applications than beginner its interface was also an upgraded version of the beginner's interface with a "file cabinet" which displayed programmers and files as icons.[9] Unlike in beginner intermediate allows you to create and manage files. In advanced mode it runs the same programs as intermediate although they do not open up in full screen mode and they have drop-down menus for every program which can be made into their own window by detaching them using a thunmbtack button it also came with a pre-loaded copy of AOL.[9] PC/GEOS won the 1991 award for the best consumer software from the Software Publishers Association.[10]

At the beginning of the '90s Brian and his team were all approached by Microsoft CEO Bill Gates to discuss about incorporating some features from the GeoWorks into Windows such as the start menu which PC/GEOS had 2½ years before Windows did. Bill also wanted to move the development team from Berkeley to Seattle, although they were not interested and the lead VC advised against this idea. Brian would later go on to describe Gates as being charming and Steve Ballmer as being the "bad cop".[5] He defended Microsoft's business practices and insisted that they "fought tooth to nail to defend their business".[5]

Around the same time, GeoWorks had extensive discussions with Apple about developing a low-cost notebook laptop which ran a modified version of PC/GEOS but with a Macintosh UI.[5] The idea of these laptops got to the point that it was presented to then Apple CEO John Sculley, although it was scrapped in favour of manufacturing and designing Macintosh PowerBooks which ran Classic MacOS. At one point in development the programming team at GeoWorks were able to produce a version of PC/GEOS which ran a User Interface indistinguishable from that of Mac, and would be able to switch how the UI appeared by going to "preferences" and selecting either "Mac UI" or "Motif UI" (another name for the start menu design). After selecting a preference the machine would automatically restart itself with the files and applications on it appearing in whatever UI you chose. Dougherty said "You almost had to see this live to see how cool it was".[5]

After the first version of PC/GEOS (GeoWorks 1X) Brian Dougherty and the team developed a second version of PC/GEOS.[8] they heavily revised the User Interface to be similar to the one seen in Windows 3x. It included new pre-installed programs such as Screen Dumper which would take screenshots of the desktop environment. It worked particularly closely with DR-DOS 6 but could also work with other versions of DOS unlike its predecessor which exclusively ran on DR DOS.[11] It was able to support graphics card formats such as CGA and VGA with max and 16 colors.

Brian accused the Java development team at Sun Microsystems for studying PC/GEOS and stealing some of its concepts to implement into Solaris. He claimed that GeoWorks's object-oriented operating environment has one of the most sophisticated U.I. technology to ever be implemented into an OS.[5]

PEN/GEOS

A rebranded version of PC/GEOS was made for the PDA market called PEN/GEOS which was considered a pioneer in the growing market for the new technology.[12] In a collaboration between Brother Industries and IBM during the IBM Eduquest School View Strategy, a modified version of PEN/GEOS was used by various low-end laptops and word processors made by Brother called the GeoBook NB60. This version of GEOS was used with other devices such as the Tandy Corporations Z-PDA[13], introduced shortly after Apples first MessagePads.

After GEOS

After Brian had retired from GeoWorks and it being sold to NewDeal inc., being rebranded to NewDeal Office, in 1995 he founded Wink Communications serving as Chairman and CTO of the company.[14] Wink communications was considered a pioneer in Interactive TV but would later on go to be sold to Liberty Media in 2002.[7] The company provided end-to-end systems for low cost electronics commerce on television. NewDeal Office was marketed in the late 1990's to those who owned i386, i486 and early Pentium computers not powerful enough to run Windows 95 or Windows 98.[15] NDO released 3 official versions, NDO 2.5, 98 and 2000 with the former and latter coming with a pre-installed Web browser called Skipper or Skipper 2000. Development on NDO ended in 2000 after the company went bankrupt.

In March 1998, Mark Bradlee, which helped Nintendo settle its company in North America, founded GlobalPC inc. along with Brian Dougherty which served as the director of the company.[16] GlobalPC inc. would later on have substantially all of its assets and assumed certain liabilities bought by MyTurn.com. The assets acquired by MyTurn would were being utilized to manufacture, distribute and sell the GlobalPC, an internet appliance and easy-to-use computer intended for first-time users which was designed to be hooked up to a Television for use.[17][16] Two commercials for the GlobalPC were made, one being a spoof on Apple inc.'s "1984" Super Bowl commercial (which won the 2001 Association of Imaging Technology and Sound International Monitor Award for Best Achievement and Best Editing) with the second commercial featuring former CNN anchor Terry Bradshaw and Bella Shaw in which they show the features of the GlobalPC. The GlobalPC was pre-installed with a modified version of PC/GEOS which was marketed as being much more simplistic than Windows and used a i486 processor.[18][19] It sold sold primarily through mass merchant retailers at a price of $299 ($541 in 2023) with brands such as Walmart and K-mart agreeing to sell the computer. The computer was also marketed as being Y2K compliant.[20]

After GlobalPC getting bought by MyTurn, Brian founded Airset inc. (formerly Airena inc.) in 2003, a private software development and cloud computing company based in Berkeley California.[21][22][1] The cloud computing software and hardware the company developed allowed individual cloud computers to get connected to a cloud network. Every cloud computer had an expandable HDD, multiple web applications and acts as a web server publishing client with the service being free. Airset would generate $142,102 annually in revenues.[22]

Before Brian founded Airset, the Breadbox corporation (then owned by former Breadbox CEO and founder Frank Fischer) bought the rights to the PC/GEOS software from NewDeal in 2002 and started development on a new version called Breadbox Ensemble.[23] Breadbox Ensemble (with "Ensemble" coming from GeoWorks Ensemble) was primarily sold to the education market for the "Bridging the Divide" project by UNESCO in cooperation with the Safadi foundation which aimed to help schools which were unable to access technology due to financial constraints.[24] Over 130 computers were refurbished because of this and had been handed out to 21 schools in Northern Lebanon with a school receiving 8-12 of those computers based upon the number of students attending. Breadbox offered a free version of BE as a demo which lacked the internet dial-up program which the commercial version had.[25] Even though BE was primarily sold to the educational market it could've still been obtained through various retailers, though it's unknown who the retailers were. The Breadbox Computer Company also developed paid software for the other versions of PC/GEOS (including the GlobalPC), with most of its software aimed at the educational market such as Crossword Maker and free software such as e-books and other forms of educational content.[26]

On November 14, 2015 it was officially announced that Breadbox founder and CEO Frank Fischer had died due to a sudden heart attack after announcing plans to port Breadbox Ensemble and PC/GEOS to Android.[27][28][29]

Since 2016, the source code for PC/GEOS has leaked onto GitHub and can be compiled and edited freely.[30] In 2017, BlueWay. Softworks bought Breadbox and Breadbox Ensemble and is the current owned of PC/GEOS.

See also

  • Berkeley Softworks
    • GEOS
    • PC/GEOS
  • list of Operating Systems
  • Imagic

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "Brian P. Dougherty - Executive Bio, Work History, and Contacts - Equilar ExecAtlas".
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Commodore Magazine Issue 01". January 1987.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 https://annarchive.com/files/Compute_Gazette_Issue_57_1988_Mar.pdf
  4. ↑ "Berkeley GEOS News (1987)(Berkeley Softworks)(US)". 1987.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 https://www.storiainformatica.it/mydocuments/guihistory/when_Gates_try_to_buy_GeoWorks.pdf
  6. ↑ "Imagic Titles for Intellivision". Intellivision Lives. Intellivision Productions. Archived from the original on 2006-12-08. Retrieved 2007-04-09.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Wink's Dougherty joins board of vidgamer THQ". 21 November 2002.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "GeoWorks Ensemble 1". GEOS-InfoBase (in Deutsch). Retrieved 2023-09-14.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 "GeoWorks (PC/GEOS) Version 1.2".
  10. ↑ "Celebrating Software". Computer Gaming World. June 1991. p. 64. Retrieved 2013-11-17.
  11. ↑ "GEOS-InfoBase / GeoWorks Ensembe 2".
  12. ↑ Butter, Andrea; Pogue, David (2002). Piloting Palm: The Inside Story of Palm, Handspring, and the Birth of the Billion-Dollar Handheld Industry. John Wiley & Sons. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-47122339-9.
  13. ↑ "Tandy Z-PDA Catalog #25-3100". RadioShack. 2004-10-25.
  14. ↑ "Global Information Summit 2000".
  15. ↑ "NewDeal Office 2.5". GEOS-InfoBase (in Deutsch). Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 "MYTURN COM INC".
  17. ↑ "Compu-dawn adds board members".
  18. ↑ "EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW".
  19. ↑ "Old chip, obscure OS power latest appliance contender".
  20. ↑ "the GlobalPC computer - What's inside". Archived from the original on 2000-03-02.
  21. ↑ "Airset launches cloud computing" (Press release).
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 "Airset inc".
  23. ↑ "Breadbox Pens GEOS Exclusive License and Ownership Rights Agreement with Geoworks". Breadbox Computer Company. 2003-04-29. Archived from the original on 2008-08-22.
  24. ↑ "UNESCO uses Breadbox Ensemble to help bridge the digital divide". Breadbox Computer Company. Archived from the original on 2008-07-13.
  25. ↑ "Breadbox Ensemble".
  26. ↑ "Educational products". Archived from the original on 2008-07-14.
  27. ↑ yu/ratthing (2015). "Frank Fischer, CEO of Breadbox Computing (owner of the GEOS OS), passes away". Archived from the original on 2016-11-08. Retrieved 2019-12-20.
  28. ↑ "Obituary: FISCHER, Frank S." Tampa Bay Times. 2015-11-17. Archived from the original on 2016-11-08.
  29. ↑ Brown, Sam (2016-08-13). "BreadBox President & Founder Dies". Archived from the original on 2016-11-08.
  30. ↑ Witkowiak, Maciej; Steil, Michael (29 January 2017). "blueway.Softworks: pcgeos". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-04-22.

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