text: In September 2012, Salon sold The WELL to a new corporation, The WELL Group Inc., owned by eleven investors who were all long-time members. The sale price was reported to be $400,000. Members have no official role in the management, but "can ... go back to what they do best: conversation. And complaining about the management." The CEO was Earl Crabb, a programmer and supporter of the Bay Area folk music community, who died on February 20, 2015. No announcement was made as to his successor.
  Technology and Structure
  The original hardware for the WELL was a VAX 11/750, which cost "a quarter of a million dollars and required a closet full of telephone lines and modems." The WELL's core conferencing software, PicoSpan, is written in the C programming language and runs on Unix. PicoSpan was written by Marcus D. Watts for Network Technologies International (NETI). A license for PicoSpan, in exchange for a half interest in the company, was part of NETI's initial investment in The WELL (along with the VAX computer running the mt Xinu variant of Unix). In 1996, the WELL began also using and licensing the "Engaged" conferencing software, which was built on top of PicoSpan and provides a Web-based user interface which requires less technological expertise from users. The Wall Street Journal was among the websites reported to use Engaged for online community.