I'm really glad this method of execution was an honest banner. (The biggest problem here might've been cutting colleagues out of the loop it sounds like they were probably supposed to be in.)
When I started reading the story, I was afraid it was going to go in the direction of sneaky sabotage, like intentionally causing performance problems or crashes. There've been accusations of that happening, within the last year. Earlier, there was a long history in the computer industry of sneaky sabotage of competitors, which was suggested by the (perhaps only a joke, in that particular case) mantra "DOS isn't done, till Lotus doesn't run".