From: Gary Britt 

If this story were true wouldn't there be huge copyright infringement
issues regarding VISTA?  Also, even though what they got was obsolete isn't
this kind of corporate theft/espionage a crime of some kind?

Its hard to believe that this could possibly be true.  If the disgruntled
employee is lying Microsoft could bring legal action against him under a
couple of possible theories.  If Microsoft doesn't bring legal action to
shut this guy up, then maybe the story is true, or true enough that
Microsoft can't threaten/sue him into oblivion.

Gary

Rich Gauszka wrote:
> If true the 'INTERCAL' story is hillarious
>
> http://www.maclife.com/article/new_roundup_proof_the_microsoft_hates_apple_ad
obe_to_announce_cs3_and_more
>
>
> Microsoft allegedly stole Mac OS X code. According to a former Microsoft
> OS developer who worked on Windows Vista, Microsoft stole source code
> from Apple in order to implement new features in Windows Vista (then
> code-named Longhorn). Clarg Creber, who worked at Microsoft for eight
> years, says that Bill Gates had a mole working for Apple. When the mole
> was discovered, Steve Jobs planted a joke operating system with the
> mole, and Microsoft fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Creber says
> that the joke OS held up Longhorn development for two years. The full
> story will be in the April 2007 print edition of Wired.
>
> http://clintonforbes.blogspot.com/search/label/INTERCAL
>
> Today a former Microsoft employee, a very disgruntled former employee,
> revealed to Wired Magazine why the company encountered such a large
> number of problems delivering their latest operating-system release -
> Apple Computer was to blame. Clarg Creber, a member of Microsoft's Core
> Operating Systems Division (COSD) for eight years until 2005, spoke to
> Wired's Hugh MacLachlan for their upcoming April print edition.
>
> HM: Thanks for speaking with me, Clarg.
>
> ...
>
> CC: Indeed. Well, to cut a very long story short, after three months of
> posing as a systems programmer, Apple's security department discovered
> the Microsoft 'mole' and brought him to the attention of Apple
> management. Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO and long-time geek-prankster,
> arranged for the source-code of Apple's obsolete System 7
> operating-system to be machine-translated to INTERCAL. A CD with the
> joke operating-system was marked with the text 'OS X 10.2 Build 9822'
> and left in the mole's trash can. Apparently he took the bait and
> delivered the disc to Gates.
>
> HM: You've lost me. INTERCAL?
>
> CC: Yes, INTERCAL. It is known as an 'esoteric' programming language. It
> is basically a practical joke, created in the early 70s. It is a
> language designed to be deliberately hard to decipher; an elaborate nerd
> in-joke.
>
> ....
>
> INTERCAL makes even the simplest of programs unnecessarily difficult to
> create and understand. That was Steve Job's joke, but unfortunately
> Gates doesn't have a very strong sense of humour.
>
> HM: How so?
>
> CC: Well... he thought the code was real.
>
> HM: Impossible!
>
> CC: Unfortunately not. He distributed the joke code to the COSD team and
> asked them to start copying features to their newly started Windows
> 'Code-name Longhorn' project using the C-INTERCAL compiler. The
> developers thought that Gates was joking and giving them a deserved rest
> after the long hours of the Windows XP project.
>
> HM: How long did it take them to realize that Gates was serious?
>
> CC: A couple of weeks after the initial project kick-off meeting one of
> the developers smiled at Gates in a hallway and quipped, "Go,
INTERCAL!"
> Gates stopped him and asked him to explain his remark. Unimpressed,
> Gates arrogantly fired the developer and told the rest of our team to
> show him some respect and "Get coding!"
>
> HM: Clarg, you are making this up!
>
> CC: I wish I was. Over the next two years our team copied over 600,000
> lines of INTERCAL code from the Apple disk into the Windows Longhorn
> code-base. I'll admit that despite the ridiculous nature of the INTERCAL
> language many of us became quite proficient. It wasn't until we had
> missed several dead-lines that management finally realised what had
> happened.
>
> HM: When was this?
>
> CC: In early 2005, shortly before I left. Of course dozens of people had
> left the team in frustration before that point, but when the INTERCAL
> bomb finally exploded it was the worst day in my career. Gates and other
> senior management could not believe the extent of the mistake.
> Unfortunately we were past the point of no return so we simply
> continued. Many widely publicised features were dropped and it took
> nearly another six months of 100-hour work weeks before the existing
> work could be cleaned up for beta testing. Much of the INTERCAL code was
> re-written in C, but I would estimate that at least half of our INTERCAL
> work made it to the final release.

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