It's 2:00 in the morning, right before the end of term, and nearly everyone urgently needs to finish a project or paper. Hands shaking from caffeine, they offer the graphic-laden fruits of their labor via blitz to the public printer, but the file is too large.
If they use File Transfer Protocol instead, they may owe an enormous debt to Jim Matthews, Owner of Fetch Softworks and former Computing Services employee.
In 1989, when Matthews first wrote the source code for Fetch FTP, he was an employee of Dartmouth's Computing Services. He never imagined that 14 years later, he would have independently licensed the software and made the diskette-toting pup that is now its emblem almost a household figure.
"Originally, I wrote the program and the College sold it for revenue," Matthews, now the owner of Fetch Softworks, said. "A few years ago, the revenues started to decrease, and the College was looking to get out of the Fetch business."
Since authoring Fetch, Matthews continued updating it as part of his College job. It is one of many programs in Dartmouth's core software program, available to all students. Students may use Fetch for uploading or downloading large files or data sets from a website, graphic web design and transferring projects between servers or locations.
"If I scan pictures or files into a Macintosh, then I send them to the [Sudikoff Laboratory's] Unix Machines or a PC using Fetch," graduate student Guanling Chen said. "Usually, I can just bring the files on my laptop, or use a more secure protocol for files."
Yet due to Blitzmail's large capacity, most students rarely, if ever need FTP for everyday use.
"Generally, the only time we hear about Fetch, or any FTP, is when new [computer science] students need to send projects or access certain databases from a PC," Computing Services employee Rod Beaton '03 said.
Some students, and even professors, however, make extensive use of FTP utilities.
"I wouldn't survive without [FTP]," adjunct professor Douglas McIlroy said. "I send files from home to work, from work to home ... I even make Christmas cards and send them to a printer by FTP."
Late in 2000, Matthews licensed the source codes for Fetch from Dartmouth using some of the money he won on the television game show "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire."
"It had always been a one-person project ... I had been doing all the programming," Matthews said. "Because I was so familiar with the program, if the College was going to sell it, I told them I wanted to be considered as a potential buyer."
He then launched Fetch Softworks as a sort of "nights and weekends" business, releasing a new version of Fetch on Jan. 9, 2001.
"The most important thing about the new version of Fetch was that it contained a lot of improvements, a more compatible interface ... and the incorporation of customer suggestions," he said.
Matthews said that since the last release under Dartmouth had been over four years ago, an upgrade was overdue.
The popularity of this new, highly compatible version of Fetch boosted sales significantly and a subsequent release even won the "Best Macintosh Program" award from Shareware Junkies in 2001. Now, Fetch even markets T-shirts sporting the disk-toting pup logo.
However, as the popularity of the program soared, so did the time commitment required of Matthews. In November 2001, he decided to leave his position as Chief Programmer for Computing Services to pursue Fetch full-time with his wife.
"It turned out to be more work than I expected. [Leaving Dartmouth] wasn't really part of a plan, but ... it's easier to focus on one thing if it's the only thing that you're doing," Matthews said. "Leaving Dartmouth wasn't something to look forward to, but it was just the right thing to do."
