Did Microsoft Borrow GPL Code For a Windows 7 Utility? 493
Goatbert writes "Rafael Rivera over at WithinWindows.com has found evidence that Microsoft has potentially stolen code from an open source/GPL'd project (ImageMaster) for a utility made available on the Microsoft Store to allow download customers to copy the Windows 7 setup files to a DVD or USB Flash Drive. If Rivera's evidence holds up, this could be some serious egg in the face for Microsoft at a time when they're getting mostly good press from the tech media."
It's .NET code (Score:1, Interesting)
It's .NET code. It's already "Open Source" by virtue of tools like Reflector [red-gate.com] existing.
Re:not sureprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's .NET code (Score:3, Interesting)
"(for use by anyone for any purpose on any operating system for no charge)"
Did you ever read the GPL?
Re:not sureprised (Score:5, Interesting)
>> Microsoft is evil. Always has been. Always will be.
> Maybe you're very young, but I seem to recall that Microsoft was at one time held as a sort of liberator from IBM's hegemony. I guess it's all a matter of perspective...
Maybe YOU are very young. IBM was taking a beating and didn't manage to get their own PC done.
So they assembled a task force and said go and get us an IBM PC.
They did it -- without IBM parts!
The processor was from Intel and the OS from a small company who had to buy it from someone else, because they couldn't do it in time (little did we know then what these guys were up to).
In summary, there were a lot of good computers with other OSes, the main ones being CP/M and AppleDOS (not necessarily the better ones).
So:
1) M$ actually helped IBM (for money, of course) and
2) M$ is known to innovate after others innovated first.
I could cite sources, but this way we can argue longer. 8-)
Not that anyone reads ACs here anymore...
Re:Knee jerk (Score:4, Interesting)
The new example is much clearer. Basic structure follows well. All the magic numbers in the code that I looked at matched too, and there are quite a few. Looks like it was massaged at least a bit, probably just to fit in with the local code environment not to obscure it.
But ...
The article points out only two weaknesses in this code borrowing. MS did not feed back any (unknown at this point) enhancements to the source. And they did not offer the source under the right license.
It is a real but very minor issue. If it wasn't MS it would not even be interesting.
MB
Umm - MS did not lift code from an OpenSource Proj (Score:3, Interesting)
Element109 wrote on: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsopticalplatform/thread/421f3137-c9aa-45fb-8c5a-ec5dd6860036
The iso and udf parsing portions were ported from the 7-zip project. The credits.txt file contains all the sources used in creating my project.
7z
by Igor Pavlov
7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio.
http://www.7-zip.org
There are links to his source on his homepage. 7-zip is hosted on the SourceForge website.
If you checkout my initial upload there is a file in the reader directory that is a very early stage of the initial udf port. I had excluded it from the VS environment and forgot about it. It is the file I deleted in the latest changeset.
Re:Did a GPL project steal code from Microsoft? (Score:2, Interesting)
Or more likely, it's a piece of MSDN example code.
Re:not sureprised (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:not sureprised (Score:2, Interesting)