In 1996 while working for WorldCom, I was challenged by my manager to write a grid control to test MFC and the Wind/U library. It took about a week or ten days as I remember. Besides the grid, the library had two property pages to select fonts and colors. They were something I could use in developing the grid and in personal projects. I think MFC or Windows has components like this now, but not in 1996.
One of the things I did before I left WorldCom was to convince management to release the WorldCom MFC library with a BSD type license, i.e. not GPL. That was over 25 years ago and my memory is a little hazy of how we released or announced it. It was mostly just something I put on my AOL website (yes, AOL...). Maybe it was announced on usenet?
After release, people started using it. Some company started making the Weekly MFC Extension...and lo and behold, the star component of their product was ... the grid control I wrote for WorldCom. So, these guys were making money off code I wrote and they had nothing to do with. It was marketed in several places, one of which was the Summer 1996 Microsoft Visual C++ Directory (page 55).
In June 1997, the WorldCom MFC library was featured in PC Computing Magazine's "Best 1,001 Free Downloads from the Web" in the programming category (page 220).
In February 1998, the WorldCom MFC library was featured in Microsoft Systems Journal (page 98). In the article, the authors ported the grid to Windows CE.
Finally, Chris Maunder started a website called code project and he modified the grid control and it was sort of the start to his website--at least that's the way I remember it.