Confessions of an IT Manager_Phil Factor

Section III: Software Projects: the Good, the Bad and the Pitiful 155
that we could get industry-standard software onto the machine. Then we would
install Wordstar, the only serviceable word-processing software that existed at
that time. We'd then write drivers for each of the small nucleus of applications
that were on the market for doing standard office functions. We'd ship all that
work to an associated company who would then sell the 'ready-to-run' software,
in the correct format, to anyone stupid enough to buy the computers. We grew
plump and prosperous on the work, and got to be on first-name terms with the
UK directors of a number of Japanese and American multinational companies.
Once the initial crisis was over, we'd start to introduce special business
management software, providing accounting and payroll functions to smallish
businesses, each one 'individually tailored' to the computer in question. Well,
that was what we'd tell everyone. Actually, the trick would be to maintain a
complete range of accounting software packages, each written in the anodyne
generic Microsoft Basic. It assumed nothing of the hardware it had to run on
beyond the ability to emulate a teletype. This was the same Basic that
Microsoft would license to these hapless and inexperienced companies, but
with hooks into the graphics and other I/O. This generic software was
maintained by a small team of programmers. Whenever a new computer was
launched in the industry, we would be up most nights converting it into a
'custom' version for the machine, complete with graphical, sound and I/O
features 'specially adapted' for that particular piece of hapless hardware.
This always went down big with the marketing arm of the manufacturers.
Even if the computer bombed in the marketplace, we would still rake in a
healthy amount of cash by consulting with them until, eventually, a wider
sanity prevailed and they would extract themselves from the PC market, licking
their wounds.
The only major downside with this enterprise was the fact that the BASIC
was interpreted, and Microsoft Basic had no effective encryption. Software had
to be provided to the customer in source. We considered drafting a legal
document, stating that whenever you hit the BREAK key, and the source
scrolled out across the screen, you had to promise to close your eyes, put a
paper bag over your head, or turn your back on the computer. However, we
doubted whether we'd be able to enforce it.
Instead, we resorted to a number of tricks to make sure that the source of all
our prosperity was not copied. It was vital that nobody else realised how easy it
was to make a killing from the battle for supremacy amongst the PC
manufacturers.
The code was therefore full of tricks, traps, and unpleasantness to thwart
even the most determined software pirate. It might be my vindictive nature, but