Today marks the 15th anniversary of the public release of Windows 95.

During the development of Windows 95, one of the team members attended a Mac conference. And not as a secret agent, either. He proudly wore a Windows 95 team T-shirt as he strolled among the booths.

The rest of us back at the mother ship wished him well and started discussing how we could get access to his dental records so we could identify his remains when they were sent back to us from the conference.

When he returned, we didn’t kill a calf in his honor, but we did marvel at his survival skills and asked him how it went.

— I got a lot of funny looks. And one guy, upon confirming that I really did work on the Windows 95 project, said to me, “I have to commend you guys on Windows 95 so far. It sucks less.”

That backwards compliment tickled the team’s funny bone, and it quickly became the unofficial team motto: Windows 95: It sucks less.