Welcome to GenealgySoftware.net – better late than never, and for now, it is a genealogy news and discussion website (see our forums). Over the coming weeks, I’ll finish uploading the database of information I have on genealogy software going back to the 1970s (over 1,000 programs and utilities), and it’ll become a true genealogy software portal.
GenealogySoftware.net will be at its core, a database of genealogy and genealogy-related software (programs, applications, whatever term you want to use) – a collection of information and news about genealogy software stretching from the very humble beginnings of genealogy programs in the 1970s up through the 2020s. The goal is to have a readily-available database of history and knowledge that genealogists (and would-be genealogists) can reference when deciding what genealogy software to use, or to assist in working with data from older genealogy programs.
We are now getting into a situation where there are people who started using a computer in their genealogy research in the 1980s or 1990s and maybe they stayed with the same program for many years at a time. Now they are passing that data on to younger generations who may struggle getting the software to work (or to transfer genealogy data stored in an older proprietary format to a newer program)
A lot of knowledge about early (1980s/1990s) genealogy programs has been lost as developers moved on to other projects or companies went under or were bought out and their software was canceled or stopped working on newer OSes, and there is a need to gather as much information about those programs as possible, while at the same time providing a central resource for news and information about contemporary genealogy apps and software still being developed here in 2024.
We will also cover genealogy-related TV shows and magazines, and select books (with a technological focus) as well.
If you’d like to support the site, and you happen to buy genealogy books off of Amazon, you can purchase them through this affiliate link – Amazon, Featured Genealogy Books and the website will receive a small commission, or through the Buy Me a Coffee donation link below:
You can also subscribe to our soon-to-be weekly newsletter at substack.
If you want to discuss genealogy software, whether it’s reminiscing over older software or finding out information on the latest and greatest, or have questions on things such as photo restoration, please post your comments or questions in our forums.
If you want to know how GenealogySoftware.net came to be, see the (extensive) About page.
When I was researching various older applications I found this succinct observation about genealogy software, from C&SC Inc., circa 1991, from the Accept Genealogical Research Program 5.0 documentation:
Putting a computer into the genealogical research game and satisfying
everyones fondest desire is impossible. First and foremost there is no
such thing as absolute accuracy in this game. Is anyone “absolutely” sure
who their parents are? How do you put John Smith in the database with
absolute assurance he is not yet in there amoung 50 million other Johannes
Smythes? Going across language and spelling barriers is not easy.
Amazing how that still applies over 30 years later, although I would point out that we can be (mostly) sure who our parents are thanks to DNA testing.