He brought down the empire by committing the ultimate offense: walking across the street and taking the additional money. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their careers, millions more disrupted because of his selfish act. In the 9th Circle will be at least your hero, RMS of GNU and Vint of PPP and Carly of "That Face."

Can you please elaborate? I get that he brought maybe a couple of dozens of people from Prism to Microsoft, but I can't see why that brought down DEC, especially it was DEC who paused Prism.

I also know that some Prism code was used in NT but again I hardly see why that brought down DEC.

That could be the cause, if DEC had some competitive hardware or software projects, but none that I know so far. Please share your knowledge with us.