[jbrazile]

I am surprised nobody here has yet mentioned the real case of what happened to Evan Brown, the former president of the Dallas Ft Worth Unix Users Group who worked at a telephone switch company as a system administrator and had an idea for a generic code translator.

Maybe the New York Times tells it best:

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/08/business/an-idea-not-yet-b...

[zem]

interesting case. the everything2 writeup seems better than the nyt one: http://everything2.com/title/The+Thoughts+of+Evan+Brown

[ScottBurson]

Ah, thank you. Yes, that puts quite a different light on it.

[Asooka]

That and the e2 article both don't mention what actually happened in the end, does anyone know? Presumably Mr. Brown liquidated everything, ran out of money and died a beggar on the streets.

[jbrazile]

I wondered that myself having left DSC and moved away from DFW long before the story concluded.

Some details from 2000... https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.dcom.telecom/Sq...

And a few more from 2004... http://www.law360.com/articles/1899/appeals-court-affirms-ex...

[zem]

i wonder too. i spent a good half hour googling and could not find out.