[gpcz]

Microsoft apparently made a deal with DEC after some Digital employees notified their senior management of how similar NT and VMS was. Microsoft paid them 65-100 million dollars (src: http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-re... ).

As Steve Yegge says in "Done and Gets Things Smart," Cutler and Carmack are the types of engineers that companies file lawsuits over when they are hired away. This is because they generate a lot of extremely visible value -- most programmers are not perceived by legal departments to be worth suing over like that.