The Fetch Story

Fetch Softworks was founded by Jim Matthews, who wrote Fetch as an employee of Dartmouth College. The first version of Fetch was created in 1989 and was intended primarily for the college's internal use. Eventually, Dartmouth made Fetch available as shareware for general users and free for educational and charitable organizations. Over the years Fetch became widely used throughout the world, providing its users with a spare but stable means for transferring files over the internet. Features were added and bugs fixed over the ensuing decade, but as Fetch was only one of several programs that Jim developed and maintained for Dartmouth College he was not able to update it as regularly as users requested.

In December 2000, Jim had the opportunity to participate on the Who Wants to be a Millionaire show with Regis Philbin. He used some of his show winnings to purchase Fetch’s source code and name from Dartmouth College and launch Fetch Softworks, so that the product could be enhanced and marketed independently. Dartmouth College is not responsible for the statements and actions of Fetch Softworks.