My Parents' Software

[matt_arnold]

Twenty years ago, my parents wrote programs for the Commodore 64 and submitted them to Ahoy magazine and COMPUTE!'s Gazette, which would print the code in its pages and send my parents about fifty bucks. I had almost forgotten about this in the time since then, but Mom just found their programs available for download on the web, complete with screenshots and full credit to them by name. "Elfred" was a Christmas game. There was also "Dots" and "Tree Tutor for Tots". The first one was a sci-fi action game named Devastator, programmed by my Dad. The site calls it "a quirky little game that is more notable for its historical significance as one of the earliest PC games distributed with a magazine."

My parents programmed free and open source software!