Pepper was a pun on Native Client (since NaCl = salt). Pepper Plugin API (PPAPI) was Google's more secure version of NPAPI (Netscape Plugin API). Flash Player was essentially the only thing using NPAPI/PPAPI by the end of its life.
The most common plugins were Flash, Silverlight, Adobe Reader, and the Java applet plugin, and I think all of those were in mildly common use when plugins were on their last legs.
I looked at it today and it is more fleshed out but still incorrect. For example:
> In 1994, the company began development of a port of Doom.
No, we were never porting Doom and we used none of Doom's code or resources. And I didn't propose to tone down the violence. The game was intended to be a fun first-person shooter in the same spirit as Doom but that was the only connection.
Microsoft was involved in a high-profile antitrust suit with the Department of Justice at the time. They were understandably sensitive about the potential PR impact of this type of game shipping with Windows and proposed gameplay design changes to reduce the violence.
Yes this isn't clean-room. Though none of these decompilation projects have been resolved in court yet. re3 (GTA3/Vice City decompilation) developers were sued by Take Two but they settled out of court.
I didn't know about this. Not sure if the developers settled or take two gave up. I would guess the latter as the decompilation / port scene seems to be going strong. Though I don't follow it that closely.
All the SWFs are archived (which is often not the case on Wayback). Just when the program is requesting to load one, archive.org is returning an HTML-wrapped file instead which fails to load. It would be quite easy to add to Flashpoint.
