Text 16761, 92 rader
Skriven 2007-03-05 20:13:18 av Rich Gauszka (1:379/45)
Ärende: Microsoft stole OS X code for Vista?
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From: Rich Gauszka <gauszka@-nospam-hotmail.com>

If true the 'INTERCAL' story is hillarious

http://www.maclife.com/article/new_roundup_proof_the_microsoft_hates_apple_adob
e_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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