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                  London, 02 - 06 December 1996
                        Issue Number 618

                              - o -
Well it seems that those reports that last year's unholy DEC - 
Microsoft alliance sprang from Microsoft's rueful decision to 
avoid getting sued by DEC for poaching its intellectual property 
were all completely true. According to an informed source who 
spoke to our sister publication ClieNT Server News, Windows NT 
meister Dave Cutler not only took engineers with him when he left 
DEC and went to work for Microsoft he also took the Mica 
operating system code he had been working on for DEC's brutally 
aborted Prism machine. An MIT guy reportedly found whole chunks 
of Mica "comment for comment, note for note" in NT. The source 
described Microsoft as having been "dragged kicking and 
screaming" into the alliance despite the fact DEC was allegedly 
prepared to lodge a suit claiming damages of upwards of $500m-
$600m. The alliance gave Microsoft a way to pay DEC off without 
appearing to. The "settlement" came to about $105m including the 
$75m Microsoft kicked in to bolster DEC's NT service and support.