Xanadu proposed a new kind of writing-- parallel pages, visibly connected.
In 1972, Cal Daniels completed the first demonstration version of the software. Daniels wrote some primitive Xanadu code in a now-defunct programming language that ran on Nelson's rented Nova computer. However, before he could show a running Xanadu system to any potential backers, Nelson unexpectedly ran out of cash and was forced to return the Nova. The programmers had working code but no machine. (Later, they would have machines but no working code.) Like Nelson's failure to complete his college hypertext project in the mid-1960s, this bankruptcy is a Xanadu milestone, for it established the coincidence of near-success and sudden penury as one of Xanadu's ineluctable motifs.
As the decades passed, it would be Gregory who oversaw the attempt to transform Xanadu into a real product. He never received much public notice, but through all the project's painful deaths and rebirths, Gregory's commitment to Nelson's dream of a universal hypertext library never waned. If Ted Nelson is Xanadu's profligate father, Roger Gregory is Xanadu's devoted mother, and in retrospect, his role appears to have been intertwined with a terrible element of sacrifice.
Autodesk cared little about becoming the McDonald's of cyberspace; its plans focused on commercial tools for sharing, distributing, and editing documents. Still, it was not easy to craft a set of contracts establishing both Nelson's freedom to use the Xanadu technology and Autodesk's ownership of it. In the end, the solution Salin, Gregory, and Autodesk negotiated was called The Silver Agreement, and it generously gave to Nelson the exclusive right to build a royalty-based publishing system using any Xanadu technology perfected by Gregory and Autodesk. Nelson had a right to the name Xanadu; the new company, owned largely by Autodesk, was called Xanadu Operating Company.
The programmers vacated their Palo Alto offices and moved into Dean Tribble's home. After Autodesk announced divestiture, in August 1992, ownership of Xanadu Operating Company reverted to the programmers and a few other longtime Xanadu supporters. Roger Gregory and Ted Nelson now owned about half the company.
Until 1987, Xanadu had been a cooperative venture, a brave band of fellow crusaders whose credo was "share and share alike." Some, like Michael McClary, recognized the instability of such arrangements, and shied away from participating until stock could be granted and salaries paid. But The Silver Agreement in 1988 created two Xanadus. Nelson's Xanadu was his imaginary system of information franchises. The Silver Agreement gave Nelson exclusive right to any royalty-based publishing business. Meanwhile, Xanadu Operating Company retained ownership of software being developed by Roger Gregory and others. The Silver Agreement required Xanadu Operating Company to give Nelson the Xanadu software for use in his Xanadu franchises, while allowing the company to control the development of the software and to use it in any other commercial venture.
