In , John started a company that he said would manufacture plants from the Belize jungle into antibiotics. John was about to be deported back to Belize when he faked a heart attack. On December 12, , he was released from detention in Guatemala and deported to the US.
In December , he announced that he would instead seek the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party. In December , he announced his intentions to run for president in the US elections. McAfee if I could come work for him, perhaps to answer the phone, type letters and send faxes tasks I knew well from working for my parents and, to my surprise and good fortune , he hired me on the spot. I stayed with John as the company grew, first out of his house and then through a series of office parks.
I ended up taking over running of the BBS from Mr. McAfee as well, becoming its sysop. Figure 3. It provided downloads of antivirus software, technical support and also allowed people to upload suspicious files. Basically, it was the web server of its era. Figure 4. Floppy disks containing McAfee antivirus software and various virus samples. Photograph copyright Dave Johnson. Used with his kind permission. You may wonder what kind of person John McAfee was — before he became in famous for other things, anyway.
There are some links at the beginning about my earliest experiences working for John, but those were written largely to capture moments I did not want to see lost, and do not define the man. So, what was he really like? McAfee could be kind. There were numerous times when he stopped to perform small acts of charity, ranging from giving a homeless person some spare change, to just talking with them. Not mocking them, or being cruel. Just talking or, often enough, just listening.
McAfee could be mercurial. We would get into shouting matches, often, over the direction of something in one of the programs. Despite its high-profile role in the Michelangelo affair, McAfee was still stuck in the minor leagues of software companies as long as it was relying strictly on antivirus packages.
In Larson, the company found a leader who could take the company to the next level. Expanding into areas outside of virus detection, McAfee bought two network-management software companies in By the middle of the year the company was offering about a dozen new software tools designed to help automate network management.
Although Larson managed to convince a reluctant McAfee that they should sell their products in stores, the new network software also would be offered as shareware on a free-trial basis.
With success inevitably comes competition. Even with the presence of bigger companies such as Symantec, however, McAfee still commanded about two-thirds of the market for antivirus software. Meanwhile, the company sought to attain a position in network management software as dominant as the one it held in virus combat.
Larson pulled this off mainly through acquisitions, using McAfee's slow but steady trickle of reliable cash flow. The acquisition of Saber, combined with the earlier purchase of Brightwork, gave McAfee control of 41 percent of the U. By antivirus programs were generating only 60 percent of the company's revenue, although it still dominated the market. The rest came primarily from network security and management software products, which McAfee was able to sell at prices not much more than half of what its competitors were charging, since McAfee distributed its products over the Internet and the others had to shrinkwrap theirs and ship them to retail outlets.
In come circles, Larson's work was seen as nothing short of a miracle. Actually, since the company was never really going anywhere to begin with, blast-off might be a better word. McAfee's string of successful acquisitions was interrupted briefly by its failed attempt to buy Cheyenne Software, Inc. It turned out that Cheyenne, a developer of storage software for computer networks, was not keen on the idea of being taken over by McAfee.
Cheyenne mounted a takeover defense strategy that included a media blitz publicizing the bid and disparaging Larson both personally and professionally. A war of words ensued, with both sides working the media furiously. Larson eventually withdrew the offer, but not before cementing his reputation as a brutal fighter in the corporate arena.
In the spring of Symantec filed a suit alleging that McAfee had stolen some of its proprietary code from a product called CrashGuard for use in one of its own software products, PCMedic. As the verbal sparring heated up, Larson sent out a press release in which Eubanks was described as "once himself an accused felon for trade-secret violations," in reference to a criminal case involving an employee Symantec had lured away from another rival, Borland International.
Since Symantec had been cleared in the case, many observers saw Larson's comment as a bit of a cheap shot. The two companies also exchanged accusations about misleading advertising claims on a regular basis. When McAfee was fifteen years old, his father who was said to be an abusive alcoholic who committed suicide. Source BBC News It was a few years later that McAfee was starting experimenting with drugs and alcohol.
McAfee later married the student. In the early s, McAfee worked as a computer consultant and later joined Lockheed Martin.
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