Walnut Creek CDROM Inc. was an early provider of

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

, and

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

s. The company was founded in by Bob Bruce in

Walnut Creek, California Walnut Creek is a city in Contra Costa County, California, United States, located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, about east of the city of Oakland. With a total population of 70,127 per the 2020 census, Walnut Creek ser ...

, in August 1991. It was one of the first commercial distributors of free software on CD-ROMs. The company produced hundreds of titles on CD-ROMs, and ran the busiest

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

site on the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, ftp.cdrom.com, for many years.

History

In the early years, some of the most popular products were

Simtel Simtel (sometimes called Simtelnet, originally SIMTEL20) was an important long-running archive of freeware and shareware for various operating systems. The Simtel archive had significant ties to the history of several operating systems: it was in ...

for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

, CICA Shareware for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, and the

Aminet Aminet is the world's largest archive of Amiga-related software and files. Aminet was originally hosted by several universities' FTP sites, and is now available on CD-ROM and on the web. According to Aminet, as of 3 September 2022, it has 83930 pac ...

archives for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

. In January 1994,Project Gutenberg on CD-ROM
/ref> it published a collection of 350 texts from

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...

, one of the first published ebook collections. Walnut Creek developed a close relationship with the

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

project from its inception in 1993. The company published FreeBSD on CD-ROM, distributed it by FTP, employed FreeBSD project founders

Jordan Hubbard Jordan K. Hubbard (born April 8, 1963) is an open source software developer, authoring software such as the Ardent Window Manager and various other open source tools and libraries before co-founding the FreeBSD project with Nate Williams and Rodn ...

and David Greenman, ran FreeBSD on its servers, sponsored FreeBSD conferences, and published FreeBSD books, including ''The Complete FreeBSD''. By 1997, FreeBSD was Walnut Creek's "most successful product", according to Bruce.FreeBSD Mall: Company History
/ref> From 1995 onwards, Walnut Creek was also the official publisher of

Slackware Linux Slackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. Originally based on Softlanding Linux System, Slackware has been the basis for many other Linux distributions, most notably the first versions of SUSE Linux distributions ...

. Walnut Creek also gained fame for its idgames subdirectory, which was the de facto distribution center for the ''

Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (born 1934), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitcher * ...

''-engine modification community at the time. As more users gained access to high-speed Internet connections, demand for software on physical media decreased dramatically. The company

merged Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...

with

Berkeley Software Design Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI or, later, BSDi), was a corporation which developed, sold licenses for, and supported BSD/OS (originally known as BSD/386), a commercial and partially proprietary variant of the BSD Unix operating system for P ...

Inc. (BSDI) in 2000 to focus more engineering effort on the similar FreeBSD and

BSD/OS BSD/OS (originally called BSD/386 and sometimes known as BSDi) is a discontinued proprietary version of the BSD operating system developed by Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDi). BSD/OS had a reputation for reliability in server roles; the reno ...

operating systems. Soon after, BSDI acquired Telenet System Solutions, Inc., an

infrastructure server supplier. The software assets of BSDI (FreeBSD, Slackware, BSD/OS) were acquired by

Wind River Systems Wind River Systems, also known as Wind River (trademarked as Wndrvr), is an Alameda, California–based company, subsidiary of Aptiv PLC. The company develops embedded system and cloud software consisting of real-time operating systems software, ...

in 2001, and the remainder of the company renamed itself

iXsystems iXsystems, Inc. is a privately owned American computer technology company based in San Jose, California that develops, sells and supports computing and storage products and services. Its principal products are customized open source FreeBSD dis ...

. Wind River dropped sponsorship of Slackware soon afterwards, while the FreeBSD unit was divested as a separate entity in 2002 as FreeBSD Mall, Inc. Also, the ''idgames'' and related archives moved to 3D Gamers in October 2001. iXsystems' server business was acquired in 2002 by Offmyserver, which reverted to the iXsystems name in 2005. In February 2007, iXsystems acquired FreeBSD Mall. Walnut Creek CDROM's URL, for a time was redirected to Simtel.net but is now "Page not found", as is SimTel (was shut down on March 15, 2013.).

References

External links

*
Collection of the software they distributed
at

The Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

{{Authority control 1991 establishments in California 2000 disestablishments in California American companies established in 1991 Companies based in Contra Costa County, California Defunct software companies of the United States FreeBSD Software companies disestablished in 2000 Software companies established in 1991 Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area