18 comments on “On the death of software, and it's programmers

  1. I was looking for an actualization to Karen back up program and I just finish to read the beautiful story of Karen. I do not know what to say. He was a special person, and leave thousands friends in all the word, included here em Brazil.
    Bye my friend.
    Rest in Peace. I miss you.

  2. Karen wrote a backup program (Karen's Replicator) that has turned out to be much easier to use than many of the backup programs that I've used before or since in the last 10 or more years.

    Thank you kindly for posting this story. Karen will be missed, not just for her programming skills, but also as a fine person who touched the lives of others.

  3. Thank you so much for posting this story about Karen. I have been a big fan of Karen's PT Replicator and used it for years. It's sad to hear of her passing, but I'm sure she is upstairs looking down and knows that she has helped so many people all other the world.

    Rest in Peace Karen and thank you for sharing your knowledge and skills with the world.

    Kind Regards
    Brian Zarth
    Sydney, Australia.

  4. I found this quite by accident after searching how to recover clipboard entries. The domain was referenced but obsolete. I appended it and found a link to this article.

    I never knew or heard of Karen but this has really touched my heart and as I sit teary eyed I am reminded that there are still some good people in this world we live in.

    Unfortunately some have had to leave to the big network in the sky. I wish I had heard about Karen before or known her work. Thank you for sharing such a powerful memory and post.

    I have been homeless myself and know it can be tough in several ways.

    I hope that you are doing okay these days.

    God Bless.

  5. I, too, am saddened by hearing of the passing of this lady that I have never met, never communicated with, but who earned my respect as a fellow programmer simply because of the constant and reliable quality of her software. I still regularly use Karen's Directory Printer and often find capabilities in the settings that are just what I'm after : it was after using it again tonight that I thought "I must drop her a line and praise her to the skies", only to find she is up there already. Bless you, Karen, and I hope that those you loved and left behind glean some comfort from the tributes people have left you, and the safisfaction people across the world still feel from using your exceptional creations.

  6. I had a recent failure of a torrent client.. I was looking for help and search after another I ended up on a reddit post which was mentioning a very familiar sounding Karen's replicator.. I followed some more links and ended up on this sad news..

    I am sure though she is in Paradise, whatever it is for each one, a place of neverending joy and peace and goodness. Amen

  7. I'm using KAREN's Replaticator for 5 year's and was looking if she had maybe an update and saw this sad news that she was not living anymore... RIP

    • I have looked around hoping someone, like her brother maybe, would pick up her work and take it forward, It is not like she did something every week/month. She worked on these little gems and sometimes skipped a year before posting one. I hope I can work a little faster.

      I have nearly all of the Karenware Power tools she had on her site and the code for them as well. I do not have a copy of her CD but I hear it had a few items that were not on her site on it. I an hoping to find someone with a copy of it I can get and post.

      I will be putting up all of them in time. A list of all her programs will be on the site Friday and Show Stopper will be released the week following. I am working on the .NET version of showstopper as well. Her version is pretty complicated with a great number of API's embedded into it so I will have a challenge getting it moved over to .NET.

      Nothing Karen did was simple. She was an amazing complex programmer and a giving person. I never had the chance to meet her I was grateful to be acquainted with her.

      I am hoping I will be able to convert and create new programs for others to take part in.

      [2018-04-26 edit - his website, craigware.blogspot.com, was listed as deleted and I couldn't find an archive of it.]

      • I'm glad to hear that the source code didn't go down the memory hole. I applaud your interest in revisiting and updating that code.

        Will you consider open sourcing your revisions once they're sufficiently different?

      • I too have been using Replicator for many years, and still to this day. I heard of Karen's passing some time ago and wondered if someone might carry on her awesome work.

        If you posted her list of works, where did you list those? I am looking for a utility program that she probably wrote that allows for printing of folders.

        Also, while I said that I still use Replicator, I seem to have a problem with it running automatically, on schedule. I think the setting are correct. Maybe it's just a WIndows setting? Or, maybe it's me?

        If you could help, that would be great!

        • The list is here: craigware.blogspot.ca/2017/03/here-is-list-of-software-karen-had-in.html

          [edit: dead link, check out the resurrected main website]

          • Thanks much! I found the little nugget I was looking for...Karen's Directory Printer...perfect!
            I am needing help getting Replicator to run on schedule. I have it set to do so, but it does not run every weekday like it is supposed to. Any ideas?

      • I'm that guy, taking up Karen's work, Joe Winett. The owner of Karen's work is Terry Starr.

        You could buy a copy of the CD from us, at https://www.karenware.com/licenseme. The ISO image presently offered is Karen's March 2010 master. We're releasing another disc around Christmastime addressing the Windows 10 Creator's Update problems and we will be going on to .NET (Karen had already been working on it)

        I'm really exhausted right now, so open source sounds great to me anyway, but it won't be happening in 2017 and probably not in the first half of 2018 -- Karen's terms are Terry's terms --- the CD comes with a text document and a Microsoft Word document of the commercial license.

        Yeh, I'm seriously worn out tonight -- I suspect I'm going to scroll down the page and find a rant from me written in July about this... I know there's one out there somewhere....

  8. March 2017

    Karen's reputation and skill lives on, way up a remote inlet on the BC coast where Replicator faithfully moves files from a virtual XP out to Windows 7 and then onwards to Dropbox each night.

    Replicator is a brilliant piece of kit.

    I will motivate the owners to Pay It Forward so that some people who could use some help will get it, courtesy of them and in gratitude to Karen.

    Fred Mason

  9. Doh, there was just one more post, Fred's. Stories of people using Replicator are great -- stories of modifying Replicator to better suit a purpose are even better --- i'd like to publish the stories, even.

    It's when I run across the aggregation sites that repackage Power Tools with crap, or put up the original install packages for download next to misleading ads that end up being randsomeware, then my stomach turns even more. Ironically those distributions didn't break the terms of her license. I think Karen would have loved the Drop Box plugin. Replicating to cloud will be a new official plugin at some point. Maybe there would be a "Click Here to Replicate on KarenWare.com's diverse storage cloud" -- but there wouldn't be any reason a person or company couldn't replicate to their own cloud... If open source then real businesses could store replica sets for profit just like Red Hat supports Linux for it.

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