PC-Talk is a communications software program. It was one of the first three widely popular

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

products sold via the

marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

method that became known as

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 ...

. It was written by

Andrew Fluegelman Andrew Cardozo Fluegelman (November 27, 1943 – July 6, 1985) was a publisher, photographer, programmer and attorney best known as a pioneer of what is now known as the shareware business model for software marketing. He was also the founding ...

in late 1982, and helped created shareware's sales and marketing methodology. Fluegelman distributed PC-Talk by sending a copy to anyone who sent him a formatted floppy disk. The application encouraged users who liked it to send him $25, but doing so was not obligatory. Fluegelman also encouraged users to make copies for friends, and provided a

batch file Batch may refer to: Food and drink * Batch (alcohol), an alcoholic fruit beverage * Batch loaf, a type of bread popular in Ireland * A dialect term for a bread roll used in North Warwickshire, Nuneaton and Coventry, as well as on the Wirra ...

to do so. Though PC-Talk is regarded as a progenitor of the shareware distribution model, it was labeled at the time both

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 ...

and "user-supported software", and included elements of

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. ...

(but not

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, n ...

). PC-Talk III was sold for $35 instead of being distributed for free; The Headlands Press offered a $25 discount to those who had previously donated. Its

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...

was available and many derivative works were created by its user community. The

CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...

IBM/PC SIG forum developed "PC-TALK III Version B, Level 850311". Both the user-modified version of the program and the CompuServe distribution point were officially sanctioned by Fluegelman and The Headlands Press, holders of the copyright for PC-TALK. Members of HAL-PC also produced custom versions that supported

videotex Videotex (or interactive videotex) was one of the earliest implementations of an end-user information system. From the late 1970s to early 2010s, it was used to deliver information (usually pages of text) to a user in computer-like format, typi ...

and IBM 3101

emulation Emulation may refer to: *Emulation (computing), imitation of behavior of a computer or other electronic system with the help of another type of system :*Video game console emulator, software which emulates video game consoles *Gaussian process em ...

Reception

PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the presen ...

'' said that PC-Talk "is elegantly written and performs beautifully. It is easy to use and has all the features I would expect from a communications program".

References

{{reflist Communication software Shareware Discontinued software