The first reported use of the word was in 1982 by an engineer at the computer software company Microsoft. Ann Winblad, president of Open Systems Accounting Software, wanted to know if Microsoft planned to stop developing its Xenix operating system as some of Open System's products depended on it. She asked two Microsoft software engineers, John Ulett and Mark Ursino, who confirmed that development of Xenix had stopped. "One of them told me, 'Basically, it's vaporware'," she later said. Winblad compared the word to the idea of "selling smoke", implying Microsoft was selling a product it would soon not support.