On the other hand..

After reading his blog, another simple explanation is that he never had the right business model. I spoke with Gary on two occasions, and he was great guy and generous with his time. I approached him once with an idea to take over an aspect of his business that he made no profit from. Something I thought would be a no-brainer.

But he refused even though he had full control over the content and it would be one less time consuming expense. He was torn between wanting to high control of exactly how EFT was used and presented and wanting to give it away to the world. In effect trying to give it away with full veto rights.

In the internet age, if you want the world to adopt your technology, you have to give it up and let people come up with uses and expressions you never dreamed of. But you can't give it up to the world and also object when it's not being represented in it's original narrow orthodoxy.

This dichotomy and uncertainty with the business model was also evident with his DVD sales. He'd charge for them but then let people copy and give them away for free.

This is not to belittle Gary in the least. His contribution to the world (and to me personally) is massive. Humanity needs as many people like Gary in this world as we can get. But in addition to legal mischief as a theory for his demise, I think it's also conceivable that he just never came up with the right business model.

And maybe that he tried to keep unrealistic editorial control of this uncontrollable worldwide phenomenon and run it as a Ma and Pa enterprise. Whereas a larger organization that acted more like an association, full tilt publisher and online advertiser would have been better equipped to run the company in a profitable way.

Of course this is all idle speculation. Tweet