Walnut Creek CDROM Inc. was an early provider of

freeware Freeware is software, 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 free ...

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, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

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 computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...

s. The company was founded 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, California, Oakland. Walnut Creek has a total population of 70,127 per t ...

, 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 dat ...

site on the

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

, ftp.cdrom.com, for many years.

History

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

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 op ...

, CICA Shareware for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, and the Aminet archives for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

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

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a 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 oldest digital li ...

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

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix 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 Uni ...

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

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

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 Rod ...

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 (SLS), Slackware has been the basis for many other Linux distributions, most notably the first versions of SUSE Linux distribu ...

. Walnut Creek also gained fame for its idgames

subdirectory In computing, a directory is a file system cataloging structure that contains references to other computer files, and possibly other directories. On many computers, directories are known as folders or drawers, analogous to a workbench or the t ...

, 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 (1934–2020), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitche ...

''-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 a company, business organization, or one of their operating units is transferred to or consolidated with another entity. They may happen through direct absorpt ...

with

Berkeley Software Design Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI or, later, BSDi), was a software company founded in 1991 by members of the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG), known for developing and selling BSD/OS (originally known as BSD/386), a commercial and part ...

Inc. (BSDI) in 2000 to focus more engineering effort on the similar FreeBSD and BSD/OS 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, Inc., 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 sof ...

in 2001, and the remainder of the company renamed itself iXsystems. 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 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

{{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