> The prospect of being bankrupted by a civil suit or thrown in prison is enough to stop most people.

Yes, but... if you're good enough to be hired by these companies, leaking source code without being traced isn't going to be hard for you. I've thought about this before and I'm actually surprised it doesn't happen more often.

If you're working at these companies you also know they have lots of people like you who will be working to track down any trace of who leaked the code. Are you willing to risk going to prison then being legally banned from touching a PC when you get out?

Also, you have little to gain from doing it even if you don't get caught. It's probably much more cathartic to blast them in a blog post than it is to anonymously release source code of an outdated/discontinued product. Especially since source is only readable to x people and a blog is readable to y. With X<<y.