[rsweeney21]

I owned zip folders for a while during the windows Vista days. I could have sworn the code was originally purchased, not written by someone at Microsoft. Honestly, it looked like it had been run through an obfuscator. I assumed that the original author had done that to ensure it was difficult for Microsoft to make changes/improvements.

I still have nightmares about that code. :)

[aargh_aargh]

I may be misremembering, but Dave has spoken on his Dave's Garage Youtube channel about running a separate software business selling small utilities and later selling some of them to Microsoft. This might have been one of them. A quick search confirms that he also claims that here:

https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kfpjhg/i_am_dave_plum...

[lgunsch]

He talks about it in one of his videos. The zip directory was a product of a side hustle of his, which Microsoft then bought out. In the video he comments how much easier it was to integrate when he had access to more internal apis.

[xnx]

Discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39587379

21 days ago | 121 comments

[shp0ngle]

It was purchased.