Former Windows NT chief architect Dave Cutler has recalled how his team sent black cardboard coffins containing fake dog mess to senior figures at rival technology firms in the 1990s. The episode illustrates the unusually combative, personal rivalry among major computing companies during the period when Windows NT was competing for influence.

The coffins, about two feet long, were delivered to Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy and IBM executive Lee Reiswig, accompanied by cards playing a funeral march. Cutler said the gesture responded partly to a Sun publicity stunt in which a dog urinated on a fire hydrant bearing Microsoft’s logo; a proposed third delivery, possibly to Oracle’s Larry Ellison, was never made.