[ Thanks to Anthony
Awtrey for this link. ]
“Nobody ever said it was going to be easy working for Microsoft.
But, at first glance, UNIX developers Randy Chapman and David
Dawson might have seemed to face even more than the usual
challenges. First, their team was charged with the daunting task,
and this was not even a year ago, of producing a version of
Internet Explorer 4.0 that would run on a UNIX operating system,
which is actually an entire rainbow assortment of operating
systems, including Solaris and HP-UX among many others.”
“Second, there was the inevitable concern that they might come
to be treated as strangers in a strange land, crossing the industry
equivalent of the Atlantic Ocean from the Old World command-line
traditions of UNIX to the GUI New World of Windows, confronted by a
host of strange new priorities: intuitiveness, discoverability,
usability….”
“Why all the urgency? Because the release of Internet Explorer
4.0 for UNIX has been one of the longest anticipated flanking
operations in the ongoing browser wars of the past few years
between Microsoft and Netscape. With the release of this product,
Microsoft is in a vastly better position to serve the needs of many
of their users with this new level of cross-platform support. No
one has argued that Internet Explorer 4.0 isn’t the superior
browser for the Windows family of operating systems. With the
release of a 4.0 version for Macintosh at the beginning of the year
that left only one significant operating system niche:
UNIX….”
“It was weird,” he remembers of his transition to Microsoft.
“After being fairly active in the Linux community, and fairly
well-known, there were a lot of people who were surprised that I
would ‘come over to the dark side.’ But in terms of the people here
it’s never been anything less than wonderful. I’ve never felt any
bias. People here are always very helpful.”
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