From: "Rich Gauszka" 

What copyright infringement on code that's a joke? If true, Jobs is still
laughing and Gates is still fuming


"Gary Britt"  wrote in
message news:45ecd22e$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> 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_a
dobe_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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