It’s always interesting when former Microsoft engineers or executives share their thoughts or stories on topics related to the company, especially Windows. However, some of these recent incidents haven’t exactly been in Microsoft’s favor.

One of them called Windows 11’s “comedically poor” performance and tried to draw the tech giant’s attention to the operating system’s apparent “unfinished” state. Another former head of Windows made a sarcastic remark at the company right after it started testing more ads and promotions in the Start menu.

There are also instances where veterans share some interesting stories about various Windows components and how they were created. Last month, Dave William Plummer, author of several key Windows components and features such as Task Manager and Zip support, shared how he bought a Corvette at the time and that it was related to his work on the latter. You can read about it here.

However, the Corvette was no coincidence as Plummer revealed in his new post that serves as backstory. The luxury sports car was one of the things that drove him when he coded at night. In Microsoft’s residential area at the time, there was a man who owned a 3,000-square-foot house with a Corvette parked in the driveway, and Plummer loved it, so much so that he said he pasted the picture of the Corvette on his monitor as a way to do it. driving him so that he can one day driving Corvette too.

If you’re wondering what kept him up at night, the ZIPFolders project was a side hustle that Plummer worked on outside of his day job at Microsoft. It was inspired by the MSJ (Microsoft Systems Journal) magazine “Big GAK” sample.

If you’re wondering about moonlighting clauses, Plummer says Microsoft was fine with working on the side with executive approval as long as it wasn’t on a competing product, which was standard.

The friction started when Microsoft noticed that Plummer had started selling this shell extension program as shareware called “Visual Zip” and someone at Microsoft took offense to it and complained to human resources.

What was funny about the situation is that Microsoft didn’t seem aware at the time that a Microsoft employee was doing it as a side hustle and as such the company was looking into purchasing the Visual Zip developer.

Eventually, things were resolved when Dave Plummer realized that it would be futile to turn down Microsoft’s deal to add the Zip component to Windows, as it would mean that he would not only lose his job at Microsoft but also have to compete with the company as it was. Working on competing products.

Thus, initial Zip support has finally landed on Microsoft Plus! 95, which was an improved version of Windows 95, and was improved in Windows 98 and 2000.

If you find the past era of Windows and its applications interesting, you can read this story we recently covered where a talented geek painstakingly ported “thousands of applications” to Windows 95.

Source: Dave Plummer (X / Twitter)