replying to that register article:

>he finally finished his nominally 12-month master's degree there

A Sloan SM/MBA is 2 yrs (nominally and actually). There is also a 12 month SM/MBA for "senior executives", so that's probably what is being referred to. But in that case, it wouldn't have been him "finishing" the degree program he had left (because he would not have been taken as a senior executive then), so they probably applied the credits he did have to this other program for which he would have to write a paper anyway.

(as a side quibble, MIT only started offering "an MBA" in the '90's (purely for job-market name recognition) and prior to that time the (same) degree was called SM Management, which is what his original program would have been. the SM is technically "better" because it entails also writing a thesis)

He visited a company I worked at when I was fresh out of school, and he was brought by my office impromptu to see what I was working on. my software crashed immediately, and he laughed, in a friendly way, but didn't ask for my resume.

I second this recommendation. Dreaming in Code is well worth the read.

I worked as a contractor at Lotus for about a year, back in 1987. My client/friend told me a story about Kapor that has stuck with me, although it turned out that she was an utterly unreliable witness... so take this with a grain of salt. She was Lotus employee #70, though, so maybe it's true.

Kapor found himself in an elevator with another employee sometime after he had handed over the reins to Jim Manzi. The other employee, who apparently didn't recognize Kapor, was dressed in a full three-piece suit. "That's when Kapor decided to leave," my erstwhile friend told me. "He said, I started Lotus because I wanted a company where I could wear Hawaiian shirts and sandals. I didn't want to work somewhere where I had to wear a suit." But that's what Lotus had become, so it was time to go.

We never met, but I have always admired the guy.