Fred Fish
Fred Fish, Jason Compton, and Dave Haynie in 1995
Born(1952-11-04)November 4, 1952
DiedApril 20, 2007(2007-04-20) (aged 54)
Known forFish Disks
Image taken at the first Amiga show in Cologne (1989, Köln). Front row from left to right, Matt Dillon and Fred Fish. Back row from the left: Oliver Wagner and Mick Hohmann.

Fred Fish (November 4, 1952 – April 20, 2007) was a computer programmer notable for work on the GNU Debugger and his series of freeware disks for the Amiga.

The Amiga Library Disks – colloquially referred to as Fish Disks (a term coined by Perry Kivolowitz at a Jersey Amiga User Group meeting) – became the first national rallying point, a sort of early postal system. Fish would distribute his disks around the world in time for regional and local user group meetings, which in turn duplicated them for local distribution. Typically, only the cost of materials changed hands. The Fish Disk series ran from 1986 to 1994. In it, one can chart the growing sophistication of Amiga software and see the emergence of many software trends.

A classic 3½ inch floppy, rotated 45 degrees to the right, with a fin on the left and bubbles on the right, giving the overall appearance of a tropical fish.
The custom fish-shaped icon used for the Amiga Library Disks from number 75 onwards.

The Fish Disks were distributed at computer stores and Amiga enthusiast clubs. Contributors submitted applications and source code and the best of these each month were assembled and released as a diskette. Since the Internet was not yet in popular usage outside military and university circles, this was a primary way for enthusiasts to share work and ideas.[1] He also initiated the "GeekGadgets" project, a GNU standard environment for AmigaOS and BeOS.

Fish worked for Cygnus Solutions in the 1990s before he left for Be Inc. in 1998.[2]

In 1978, he self-published User Survival Guide for TI-58/59 Master Library,[3] which was advertised in enthusiast newsletters covering the TI-59 programmable calculator.

Personal life

Fred Fish was married to Michelle Fish (née Norman) at the time of his death. Fred Fish died at his home in Idaho on Friday April 20, 2007 of a heart attack.[4]

References

  1. ↑ "Fish disks 1 - 1120". www.amiga-stuff.com. Retrieved 2023-04-12.
  2. ↑ "Fred Fish". Archived from the original on December 24, 2008. Retrieved 2017-09-25.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), Green Blog.
  3. ↑ Fish, Fred (1978). "User Survival Guide for TI-58/59 Master Library" (PDF). rskey.org. Retrieved 2018-06-19.
  4. ↑ "Richard Fish - Fred Fish will be missed". sourceware.org. Retrieved 2023-04-12.
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