Solitaire Never Brought A Single Cent To Its Creator

The creator of one of the most famous Windows games ever has been sought out by reddit, who explains that he was just an intern when he made Solitaire for Microsoft in 1988.

“I wrote it for Windows 2.1 in my own time while an intern at Microsoft during the summer of 1988. I had played a similar solitaire game on the Mac instead of studying for finals at college and wanted a version for myself on Windows. At the time there was an internal ‘company within a company’ called Bogus software. It was really just a server where bunch of guys having fun hacking Windows to learn about the API tossed their games,” Wes Cherry explained.

When you make something while working for the company, it's the company that owns everything.

Most used app of all time? Now here's a question, is the exact code he wrote the same one that was on Win95, WinXP, etc etc etc? No? Then maybe his code isn't the most used app of all time.

djstarfox said:

When you make something while working for the company, it's the company that owns everything.

Click to expand...

I recently watched a documentary about George Westinghouse. Westinghouse's main competitor was Edison. Edison treated people like shit, Westinghouse treated people with respect and his employees loved him.

When a Westinghouse employee created an invention, Westinghouse allowed that employee to own patent and Westinghouse would license the patent. When one of Edison's employees created an invention, Edison immediately took ownership of the patent.

Edison promised Tesla $50k to successfully improve Edison's inefficient motors and generators. After accomplishing the task, Tesla inquired about payment. Edison replied that he was only joking, that Tesla didn't understand American humor, and instead offered Tesla a $10 raise over Tesla's $18 weekly salary. Tesla refused, resigned, and eventually ended up working for Westinghouse as a consultant for a period of time.


Westinghouse (Full Feature Documentary), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BUpF__h-IY

sad that he didnt get paid for it, but it seems he got paid for other stuff he did at ms.

after i migrated from the amiga to a 489 dx pc, my parents for a few months took away my games, no wincommander, doom, syndicate etc was almot the end of the world for me. but as i got through listening to a ton of music cds and playing dolitare and mine sweeper

He agreed to let them include it in windows 3.0 and he was given a pc in trade. On top of that he is fine with his choice so don't see a problem here. It is one of those things where you don't know at the time how well it will do. It is just something silly to toss on there to have some game, and then suddenly it takes off as a way for people to waste time. Just like Minecraft. They didn't know or think when making it that it would explode like it did. Sometimes thing just catch you off guard.

Sorry, this is just the way the cookie crumples. I wrote an application for my company that cut QA time on a 5 year project by 75%. The company saved millions. I got an 50% raise.

Solitaire is not that popular because what he did is so great. It's popular because it's included with the most widely used desktop OS.

Yaka said:

sad that he didnt get paid for it, but it seems he got paid for other stuff he did at ms.

after i migrated from the amiga to a 489 dx pc, my parents for a few months took away my games, no wincommander, doom, syndicate etc was almot the end of the world for me. but as i got through listening to a ton of music cds and playing dolitare and mine sweeper

Click to expand...

I similarly migrated from an Amiga 1000 (upgraded from 512 kilobytes to 2 megabytes of RAM) to a Packard Bell 486 DX2-50 MHz with 4 megabytes of RAM (upgraded to 8 megabytes so I could play Ultima VIII: Pagan) in 1993. The Amiga was a hell of a machine, well ahead of its time, but all of the gaming software by the mid-90s in which I was interested was for "IBM PC and 100% compatible) machines.

If he got a lot of MS stock way back when he probably did just fine.

M76 said:

Sorry, this is just the way the cookie crumples. I wrote an application for my company that cut QA time on a 5 year project by 75%. The company saved millions. I got an 50% raise.

Solitaire is not that popular because what he did is so great. It's popular because it's included with the most widely used desktop OS.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't know how your salary was relative to market, but a 50% raise is incredible. I'm sure in today's environment, a similar action might get rewarded with not being laid off.

Uvaman2 said:

Yeah, I don't know how your salary was relative to market, but a 50% raise is incredible. I'm sure in today's environment, a similar action might get rewarded with not being laid off.

Click to expand...

Honestly I was being paid shit. Even after the raise I was making less than average. I was a lowly operator, only hired a few months before. It wasn't my job to do anything regarding workflow efficiency. It was on my own initiative.

Guess there are employers who would have reprimanded me for not minding my own job. But thankfully it's not a place like that. Here it paid off. Currently I have the highest wage at the company apart from mid and top management.

M76 said:

Sorry, this is just the way the cookie crumples. I wrote an application for my company that cut QA time on a 5 year project by 75%. The company saved millions. I got an 50% raise.

Solitaire is not that popular because what he did is so great. It's popular because it's included with the most widely used desktop OS.

Click to expand...

Only difference is he didn't make this on company time. He made the game at home and was showing it to others in the office just to show off what he did. Project manager then asked him about including it in the next version of windows. It is popular because it is a easy way to blow time in an office back before the days of internet games or facebook. So you want to kill 5 minutes you play a quick game. He even said he played the game on a mac at the time so wanted a windows version. So it wasn't new when he did this.

Deadly Ramon said:

I similarly migrated from an Amiga 1000 (upgraded from 512 kilobytes to 2 megabytes of RAM) to a Packard Bell 486 DX2-50 MHz with 4 megabytes of RAM (upgraded to 8 megabytes so I could play Ultima VIII: Pagan) in 1993. The Amiga was a hell of a machine, well ahead of its time, but all of the gaming software by the mid-90s in which I was interested was for "IBM PC and 100% compatible) machines.

Click to expand...

aye was the same for me. i sold of my amigas at the right time, made a tidy profit as when commodore went bankrupt demand for amigas briefly went sky high in the uk. if some thing like ebay existed back then prolly would have made a tidy some.

here in the uk there are still some diehards who still think they are among the elite still beliving in a dead system