From: Gary Britt 

I understood it to be real code from System 7.  Even 100% joke code would
still be copyrighted under today's rules and the Berne convention. 
However, if its not officially copyrighted you aren't entitled to statutory
damages.
  You would still be entitled to an injunction that would require Microsoft
to stop selling Vista as long as it contained offending code.

This or course assumes there isn't some cross licensing agreement Microsoft
has that might cover its ass.  Such an agreement might exist from times
past when Microsoft pumped in $140 million into apple.

Gary

Rich Gauszka wrote:
> 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_
adobe_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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