unix_surrealism

“It was at a USENIX Windows NT conference and Microsoft was presenting their future directions for NT. One of their speakers [Greg Sullivan, a Product Manager at Microsoft] said that they would release a UNIX integration package for NT that would contain the Korn Shell. I knew that Microsoft had licensed a number of tools from MKS [Mortice Kern Systems] so I came to the microphone to tell the speaker that this was not the “real” Korn Shell and that MKS was not even compatible with ksh88. I had no intention of embarrassing him and thought that he would explain the compromises that Microsoft had to make in choosing MKS Korn Shell. Instead, he insisted that I was wrong and that Microsoft had indeed chosen a “real” Korn Shell. After a couple of exchanges, I shut up and let him dig himself in deeper. Finally someone in the audience stood up and told him what almost everyone in the audience knew, that I had written the ‘real’ Korn Shell. I think that this is symbolic about the way the company works.”

-David Korn