1. Microsoft once licensed a Unix-based operating system. It was called “Xenix” and was licensed from AT&T for Microsoft to redistribute. They eventually changed their minds and sold it to Santa Cruz Operation (SCO). This is ironic given that every competitor to Windows today is based on a Unix core.

2. Bill Gates’ parents originally didn’t plan on his going into computers. His father was a prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem, and his grandfather was a national bank president. So the family plan was for him to become a lawyer, too. Probably good he didn’t listen to them, huh?

3. Internet Explorer is a direct descendant of Spyglass Mosaic. The original Mosaic came from NCSA with Spyglass as its commercial licensing partner. Microsoft bought a copy of Mosaic from Spyglass and developed it into Internet Explorer.

4. Bill Gates’ personal programming resume includes “DONKEY.BAS.” This was a BASIC game written to test Microsoft’s BASIC interpreter. Microsoft was in fact originally only going to design programming languages, not operating systems.

5. A series of internal memos called “the Halloween Documents” details Microsoft’s corporate strategy against its open-source competitor Linux. They’re still published online here and there. They were unearthed during the US antitrust case. “Halloween” is a United States holiday celebrating ghosts, goblins, and spooky stuff, so it kind of fits.

6. Bill Gates and former US president George W. Bush are 8th cousins. That was determined by genealogist Dave Barrett. They both descended from Henry Whitney, who came from England to Long Island, NY, US, in 1635.

7. Microsoft employs “evangelists.” A technology evangelist is “a person who attempts to build a critical mass of support for a given technology in order to establish it as a technical standard in a market that is subject to network effects.” One such evangelist was James Plamondon, who spearheaded the campaign to get Microsoft’s first copy of Windows declared as the standard PC system.

8. Microsoft campus has its own annual Puzzle Hunt. It’s modeled after the famous Puzzle Hunt at MIT campus, Boston, US. For a day, employees scramble around hunting for clues, solving puzzles, and pitting their wits against engineers for a chance to locate a secret treasure hidden on the property.

9. Before trying to develop for IBM, Microsoft attempted to launch the MSX computer system. The standardized home computer architecture was introduced the 1980s, but was based in Japan. For a while there, the MSX was the de-facto gaming platform for Japanese gamers before the Nintendo came along. The MSX was never marketed much in the English-speaking world, however.

10. Microsoft Bob was Melinda French’s idea. Melinda spoke up between Windows 3.1 and Windows ’95 to ask for a more user-friendly system. Melinda was, at the time, Bill Gates’ girlfriend, and they only later married to have her become Melinda Gates. Good thing their marriage did better than Microsoft Bob did!

We’ve actually been watching this fight between Microsoft and Mozilla since 1995, and in fact they’re actually descended from the same web browser. You heard me: Internet Explorer and Firefox. The same parent browser.

Meh, loosely speaking, anyway. The original, the one and only classic, is NCSA Mosaic. Another company, Spyglass, licensed the web browser code. To quote the Mosaic Wiki page:

“Spyglass licensed the technology and trademarks from NCSA for producing their own web browser but never used any of the NCSA Mosaic source code. Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic in 1995 for US$2 million, modified it, and renamed it Internet Explorer.”

So that was at least the technology that went into Mosaic and also got sold to Microsoft. Meanwhile, Mosaic Communications begat Netscape Communications Corporation, producing Netscape Navigator. And lo, Netscape Navigator was eventually released as open source, under the codename of “Mozilla”. Does that name ring a bell? Yes, the same Mozilla corporation which produces Firefox.

The next time you’re in a heated debate with other web developers about which is the better browser or which one will win the desktop war, you can just wave your hand and go “What’s the difference? They’re both at least cousins to each other.” Then point them here.

Peter Brittain