I recently had occasion to go digging around in the installers for MacOS System 7.0.1 and 7.6, extracting its excellent beep sounds to use on my phone. While schlepping around I found wonderful little gems where the developers signed their work. The 7.0.1 installer binary contains a plea for help from the Blue Meanies, shown here. The 7.6 installation tome contains a series of images, reproduced further down this page. As the best laid plans of mice and developers often go astray, the largest image is corrupted in the CD golden image, with a blue cast over the bottom third of the image. I'm sure that was disappointing.
00000000 4d 61 63 69 6e 74 6f 73 68 20 53 79 73 74 65 6d |Macintosh System|
00000010 20 76 65 72 73 69 6f 6e 20 37 2e 30 2e 31 0d 0d | version 7.0.1..|
00000020 0d a9 20 41 70 70 6c 65 20 43 6f 6d 70 75 74 65 |.. Apple Compute|
00000030 72 2c 20 49 6e 63 2e 20 31 39 38 33 2d 31 39 39 |r, Inc. 1983-199|
00000040 31 0d 41 6c 6c 20 72 69 67 68 74 73 20 72 65 73 |1.All rights res|
00000050 65 72 76 65 64 2e 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 |erved. |
00000060 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 | |
*
00000200 60 04 4e fa 05 22 59 4f 2f 3c 62 6f 6f 74 3f 3c |`.N.."YO/<boot?<|
00000210 00 01 a9 a0 22 1f 67 54 4f ef ff 86 20 4f 42 a8 |....".gTO... OB.|
00000220 00 12 42 68 00 1c 42 68 00 16 a2 07 66 34 31 68 |..Bh..Bh....f41h|
00000230 00 42 00 16 67 36 31 68 00 44 00 18 22 41 22 51 |.B..g61h.D.."A"Q|
00000240 21 49 00 20 21 7c 00 00 04 00 00 24 31 7c 00 01 |!I. !|.....$1|..|
00000250 00 2c 42 a8 00 2e a0 03 66 08 20 78 02 ae 4e e8 |.,B.....f. x..N.|
00000260 00 0a 0c 40 ff d4 66 04 70 68 a9 c9 70 63 a9 c9 |...@..f.ph..pc..|
00000270 a9 20 31 39 38 33 2c 20 31 39 38 34 2c 20 31 39 |. 1983, 1984, 19|
00000280 38 35 2c 20 31 39 38 36 2c 20 31 39 38 37 2c 20 |85, 1986, 1987, |
00000290 31 39 38 38 2c 20 31 39 38 39 2c 20 31 39 39 30 |1988, 1989, 1990|
000002a0 2c 20 31 39 39 31 20 41 70 70 6c 65 20 43 6f 6d |, 1991 Apple Com|
000002b0 70 75 74 65 72 20 49 6e 63 2e 0d 41 6c 6c 20 52 |puter Inc..All R|
000002c0 69 67 68 74 73 20 52 65 73 65 72 76 65 64 2e 0d |ights Reserved..|
000002d0 0d 48 65 6c 70 21 20 48 65 6c 70 21 20 57 65 d5 |.Help! Help! We.|
000002e0 72 65 20 62 65 69 6e 67 20 68 65 6c 64 20 70 72 |re being held pr|
000002f0 69 73 6f 6e 65 72 20 69 6e 20 61 20 73 79 73 74 |isoner in a syst|
00000300 65 6d 20 73 6f 66 74 77 61 72 65 20 66 61 63 74 |em software fact|
00000310 6f 72 79 21 0d 0d 54 68 65 20 42 6c 75 65 20 4d |ory!..The Blue M|
00000320 65 61 6e 69 65 73 0d 0d 44 61 72 69 6e 20 41 64 |eanies..Darin Ad|
00000330 6c 65 72 0d 53 63 6f 74 74 20 42 6f 79 64 0d 43 |ler.Scott Boyd.C|
00000340 68 72 69 73 20 44 65 72 6f 73 73 69 0d 43 79 6e |hris Derossi.Cyn|
00000350 74 68 69 61 20 4a 61 73 70 65 72 0d 42 72 69 61 |thia Jasper.Bria|
00000360 6e 20 4d 63 47 68 69 65 0d 47 72 65 67 20 4d 61 |n McGhie.Greg Ma|
00000370 72 72 69 6f 74 74 0d 42 65 61 74 72 69 63 65 20 |rriott.Beatrice |
00000380 53 6f 63 68 6f 72 0d 44 65 61 6e 20 59 75 0d 00 |Sochor.Dean Yu..|
Do You Sign Your Work?
Every ASIC I worked on has an undocumented register hardwired to read out my initials, and many ASIC designers follow a similar practice. Some take it further by changing the actual operation of the device, for example I've heard of a mode to insert a phrase like "We are the Knights who say Ni!" into the datastream (actual phrase omitted to protect the guilty). Functional modification like this always seemed too risky to me, a bug or manufacturing defect could conceivably enable it unexpectedly.
In ASIC design these tidbits serve a real business purpose: it is not unknown for departing employees to take a copy of a netlist or verilog source with them, and the company can find itself competing with its own designs. The existence of these telltale registers can serve as legal proof that the design was stolen, not reverse engineered.
Amongst software developers the practice of signing one's work is far from universal. GUI applications sometimes put developers names in the About box, though even this practice seems to be less common that it used to be. Developers of infrastructure devices without direct display to a user typically don't include any way of crediting the developers, in my experience. I think that is a shame. Signing ones work represents pride in craftsmanship, a desire to broadcast that "I made this."
Can You Sign Your Work?
Sometimes a company will ban the practice of listing developers names. A common reason I've heard is they don't want to enable recruiters to target their developers, but that is an astonishingly bad reason. Not only is it completely ineffective in this age of LinkedIn and hyper-connectedness, its also insulting that denying credit is considered to be a retention policy.
A second, more acceptable reason for banning names is that given the size and loose connections amongst teams working on a product its easy to mistakenly omit people who've made valuable contributions, engendering resentment. This is plausible, but I suspect that means the teams should find a way to maintain their own list of contributors and combine them as needed in the final product.
You Should Sign Your Work
I encourage developers to sign their work in an accessible (though not gratuitously intrusive) way. Encouraging pride in one's craft is a net positive for the product, and for the profession. Civil Engineers and architects on large projects sign their work, in the form of a plaque or cornerstone. Artists and craftspeople sign their work. Software engineers should, too.