Microsoft Steals Code From Microblogging Startup 315
Readers davidlougheed and TSHTF both let us know that microblogging service Plurk reported today that Microsoft China not only copied look and feel from its interface, but also copied raw code from Plurk's service, when it released its own microblogging service called MSN Juku (or Mclub). In instances of the code released on the Plurk blog, the layout, code structure, and variable names were very similar or in some cases 100% identical. The story has been covered in multiple media sources. The software theft is hypocritical, given Microsoft's past threats against Chinese software piracy."
Of course being in China, (Score:5, Insightful)
the Chinese portion of anything is going to deny it's theft and call the original coders liars. The Chinese are great about this, the government mindset is embedded in the younger citizens - such as "We do not filter our Internet access, we have a few routing issues."
Yeah, right.
Re:Of course being in China, (Score:5, Insightful)
Troll? Seriously? Has anyone seen the way younger Chinese react to anything even resembling the mildest criticism of China or Chinese people or the Chinese government? Dude! They're pricklier than a porcupine.
Re:Of course being in China, (Score:5, Funny)
Chinese moderators.
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It never ceases to amaze me just how holier than thou Americans are vis a vis the Chinese. FD: I've never been to either country. I have, however, traveled extensively, and I know many, many people from both places. I am also familiar with the foreign policy of both nations, and pay attention to news coming out of there and in the world generally.
I think I am in a position to say that the US is in no position to be pointing fingers at other countries,m criticizing their behavior in any respect.
- China has t
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"Cut with the "CHINEZE ARE TEH EVILZ!" crap."
Just because there are multiple evils, doesn't make one of them less evil.
Re:Of course being in China, (Score:5, Insightful)
Right,
And the evil in this case, since everybody seems to have forgotten, is Microsoft.
Microsoft stole Plurk's design and code. Not the Chinese. Not the Americans.
This business with a long history of unethical behavior and misappropriation is what we should be discussing here, not two nations of very diverse people.
Re:Of course being in China, (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft stole Plurk's design and code. Not the Chinese. Not the Americans.
Nice try. Microsoft outsourced its coding to a Chinese company, THEY stole the source code and design. Quoting from Ars Technica [arstechnica.com]:
The debacle with Juku is an indication that the software giant needs to either stop outsourcing its various small projects (unlikely to happen anytime soon), or come up with a better way to cross-check its code.
This is a CHINESE malaise, not a Microsoft one. Half of the huge Chinese websites out there rely on stealing content [arstechnica.com] and code theft [mashable.com] to launch. Blaming Microsoft because they are the largest target is trendy, but misleading.
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Americans are pretty much 100% in support of the policies of the Chinese government. That's is why we Americans give their country over 300 billion dollars a year in financial support.
Surely we wouldn't give them so much money if we opposed them??? Right???
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America's government is pretty much 100% in support of the policies of the Chinese government. That's is why America gives their country over 300 billion dollars a year in financial support.
Surely we wouldn't give them so much money if we opposed them??? Right???
Fixed that for you.
Re:Of course being in China, (Score:4, Insightful)
[Citation needed ]
And here I thought that the Chinese and some oil-nations propped up the USA economy by buying bonds and treasure bills from the USA.
A year ago USA needed to borrow 2.8 billion USD a day to keep the economy from tanking. The total gross debt of 2008 where 9.98 trillion USD which is 70% of the GDP.
Anyone who thinks that China needs financial support from the USA needs a reality check and to stop listening to biased news.
USA is in deep dodo financially.
Re:Of course being in China, (Score:5, Informative)
This once I choose to post anonymously to protect myself and my Chinese visa.
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Save Guantanamo, people are not dragged away to torture, incarceration and sometimes murder without trial.
That's like saying "if you ignore the trees, there is no forest here".
Re:Of course being in China, (Score:5, Insightful)
No people are so hopelessly enslaved as those who truly believe they are free.
I'm not going to ask what you mean by "free"; I'll just say this: there is essentially no difference between believing you're free and actually being free. Your behavior doesn't change if you go from merely believing you're free to actually being free. (After all, if you believe you're free, you will behave as if you are actually free. In other words, it makes no difference.)
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That's rather insightful. Thank you for that beautiful nugget of wisdom.
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That's a real quote to keep. I'm scared and disgusted at the same time.
Re:Of course being in China, (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll just say this: there is essentially no difference between believing you're free and actually being free. Your behavior doesn't change if you go from merely believing you're free to actually being free
Not quite. There are several ways how that could fail to be true. The easiest is simply that I can convince you that "free" means something more restrictive than the rest of the world considers "free" to be. Just because you (rightly) believe that you're free in that restricted meaning doesn't imply that you'd act the same if you were actually free in the wider meaning.
There's another, more insidious, possibility. Consider this: If someone greatly inconveniences you, you could get them killed. Yet, even if you believed you could get away with it, and that murder would actually be the most efficient way of dealing with the matter, basic human nature would prevent you from actually doing it. You might believe yourself to be free to kill the person "if you really wanted to", but fact of the matter is that you're not, because you'll never "really want to". In comparison, a psychopath is truly free to murder just because it's the easiest way out. So, the question is: what things do people believe they can do, but actively refrain from? Can you manipulate people into creating those limitations on themselves?
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You might believe yourself to be free to kill the person "if you really wanted to", but fact of the matter is that you're not, because you'll never "really want to"
That makes no sense. As you say, if they really wanted to, they could do it, so they are free to do it in that regards. There is no government sanctioned brain control mechanism in place to stop it (well, AFAIK, I confess I haven't actually tried killing anyone yet!).
They are not "free" to do it in the sense that we are talking about, because there are laws against it. There's a difference between "can get away with it" and "free to do it". Even if you had a group of consenting adults engaging in cannibalis
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If that's the case, how do you define "free"?
How ever he is told to.
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No people are so hopelessly enslaved as those who truly believe they are free.
I'm not going to ask what you mean by "free"; I'll just say this: there is essentially no difference between believing you're free and actually being free. Your behavior doesn't change if you go from merely believing you're free to actually being free. (After all, if you believe you're free, you will behave as if you are actually free. In other words, it makes no difference.)
Maybe, but ignorance is bliss too right?
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- The US has illegal wiretaps.
- China subjugates Tibet and the Uygur and threatens to annex Taiwan.
- The US subjugates every nation in Latin America, and simply depopulates [wikipedia.org] places that it decides it wants.
- China's police often behave like little more than Jackboot thugs.
- Anyone seen footage from how the authorities handled Katrina? (Unedited footage I mean, not the sanitized stuff for TV).
- China polices its culture pretty closely with state organizatio
Re:Of course being in China, (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, while I mostly agree with your post, Guantanamo and the Patriot act have demonstrated that the american government can very well be as bad as the Chinese one, albeit under the terrorist cloak. The scale is different, but the harm done is about the same in quality.
Re:Of course being in China, (Score:5, Insightful)
Texas? California? Or, much better, Hawai'i?
CC.
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Comparing the annexation of Tibet with, what? Panama?
Texas? California? Or, much better, Hawai'i?
So wait, if China were to legalize human slavery, you'd be OK with that because the U.S. (and many other countries) did it for a long time?
I think the relevant aphorism is: "two wrongs don't make a right" -- if the U.S. does something bad, then criticize that, but it is not a reason to stop criticizing (e.g.) China.
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Comparing wiretapping to the attempt at national censorship?
If we compare on this point alone, I consider the US to be almost as bad as China. Is it worse to openly censor content, or covertly operate massive surveillance programs, disappear your citizens without charge indefinitely, refuse their lawyers permission to even talk about the case, and have them tortured by third parties in an attempt to extract information? There is no presumption of innocence as soon as the word terrorism is invoked. What you call 'wiretapping' is now way beyond that, and mass tracking
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Is it worse to openly censor content, or covertly operate massive surveillance programs,
Wiretapping in the US is on a much smaller scale (both in real numbers and as a percent of the population), so the number of people who's rights are being violated are much smaller. The Chinese government is trying to censor 100% of their population, which means that they are trying to surveil 100% of the population (you can't censor someone you aren't surveilling). Even if the US government were to censor eve
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The Chinese took control of Tibet from an existing authoritarian regime. Arguably, there wasn't much of a shift downward for the residents. The US literally kicked out the Diego Garcians.
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Diego Garcia's depopulation was done by the UK, not the US. The US wanted an island, and liked this one, they asked the UK to purchase it, and find some way to to make the island unpopulated. There are many ways to do so, some more legitimate than others. Fur example, it may have been possible to offer other land, money and other amenities to the natives in exchange for the island, or other similar things. Instead the UK decided to do such terrible things as attempt to starve the people off the Island, and
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You depopulation link points out that the British Foreign Office actually did the depopulating. The US just benefited from it (along with the UK of course).
Also, comparing wiretaps to the great firewall isn't exactly apples to apples. At least we can go where we wish on the internet. Big brother is just watching, opposed to China, which just can't go anywhere not sanctioned by the government (proxy hacks aside)
Care to be more specific about Katrina? I don't recall any cases of police abuse. Failure to preve
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I quite agree. Pointing fingers at oneself can be productive. Pointing fingers at others is usually just a way to self-deception. I always liked what Einstein said, i.e. "I think the only way to teach another is by example, even if it's an example of what not to do".
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The main difference between China and the US is that an American could publically agree with everything you just said, and not be killed for it.
Not even remotely similar (Score:3, Insightful)
- China has the Great Firewall.
- The US has illegal wiretaps.
Tiananmen Square [google.com] vs. Tiananmen Square [google.cn]
Illegal wiretaps are nasty invasions of privacy and are a wrong that the U.S. government committed. You can read about and debate them in thousands of blog posts and news articles, none of which are censored. That's how you know about it. The same cannot be said of many things within China.
Cultural relativism is the most lazy mental posture there is. "Hey, we're all different and about equally evil." Then it's ok to drift through life, I guess?
Humans and human instituti
Re:Of course being in China, (Score:5, Insightful)
Or has anyone seen the way Americans react to anything even resembling the mildest criticism of USA or it's people or how they try to shove their laws and "freedom" (the fact you cant smoke pot, can get up to 800 years in prison and are fucked over by RIAA really is freedom)?
You can say that about any country in the world.
Comments like the GP did really just make Americans seem more stupid and completely without knowledge about the other countries. Guess what, your government is master in shoving mindsets and specific thinking to its citizens. So much that I'll probably get lots of angry "no it isn't so, we have freedom!" to this reply. It's the true mind controlling.
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Much of the vociferous criticism of the USA and its people comes from other Americans, so it doesn't seem like a particularly apt analogy. I'm admittedly not as familiar with the Chinese blogosphere as with the American one, but are there really Chinese equivalents to, say, DailyKos, that spend extensive time excoriating their own country's culture and government?
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Actually, yes, yes there is. Oh, and iPhone, there's an app for that! [slashdot.org]
The big difference is, the DailyKos, which granted is a bunch of drivel, is a privately run bunch of drivel pushing an agenda. The Chinese drivel sites are either government run or government censored/dictated sites pushing an agenda.
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I'm aware there's a Chinese blogosphere. What I was curious is whether there was a part of the Chinese blogosphere that focuses on criticizing Chinese society and government, rather than promoting it.
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Oh, well, not FROM China. That's why we have Slashdot.
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Of course, there's Americans like me who criticize our own. As a matter of fact there's lots of Americans who criticize our own. Usually those of us in the U.S. like to defend or condemn individual issues and yes, like it or leave it is often the answer, but I think you'll find not all of use generalize as much as you are.
I'm with you. We should legalize pot, the RIAA is a bunch of A-Holes that need to get shut down, and yes, our government is way to powerful and sticks its nose where it doesn't belong.
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NOt necessarily every country: in Finland, people and companies have a pretty solid track record of taking responsibility of their actions. It's part of the culture. The chinese have, on the other hand, a solid track record of lies and deceptions. Just look at the various falsities/fakeries during the Beijing Olympic games.
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"No, you're brainwashed!"
etc.
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Troll? Seriously? Has anyone seen the way younger Chinese react to anything even resembling the mildest criticism of China or Chinese people or the Chinese government? Dude! They're pricklier than a porcupine.
Reminds me of Americans. And Linux fanboys. And Windows fanboys. And mac fanboys. And AMD/Intel fanboys. And console fanboys. And PC fanboys. And...
Who modded the parent as insightful? (Score:2, Informative)
the Chinese portion of anything is going to deny it's theft and call the original coders liars. The Chinese are great about this, the government mindset is embedded in the younger citizens - such as "We do not filter our Internet access, we have a few routing issues."
Yeah, right.
Have you even visited China, or are you just talking out of your ass? Let me guess, you think that everything is cheap and ripped off here too, right? As someone who moved to China from the U.S., and who works with young Chinese people every day, let me clue you into something: you hear a lot of nonsense and propaganda about China, and there are a lot of assumptions that are wrong. Fortunately for people like you, not enough Chinese people can speak English fluently to slap stuff like this down on Slashdot.
no no no (Score:3, Funny)
*puts finger in ears and chants:
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
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But copyright violation != theft. Theft denies the original owner use of the good being stolen. It's important to distinguish between the two ideas as the two crimes have different impacts on society, a
They failed at copying (Score:5, Funny)
That's why, when I copy source code I always change all variables, functions and classes to a, b, c, ...
Copyright immunity and job security all in one.
Re:They failed at copying (Score:5, Funny)
That's why, when I copy source code I always change all variables, functions and classes to a, b, c, ...
Whenever I copy code, I make sure it follows my current employer's coding standard.
Unfortunately, this makes it hard to find code to copy, so I always have to write my own.
-Todd
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Dude. It’s a website. Simply use this thing here for the javascript: http://closure-compiler.appspot.com/home [appspot.com]
(And render all HTML by use of JS/DOM generation.)
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The verse: "and wouldn't you know that the right I granted you to petition me " is part of the lyrics from my latest hit "Petition me, my love".
You owe me $65.000.000 in copyright fees and damages to my artistic image.
Why does this kind of stories (Score:5, Insightful)
Tsk (Score:2)
Get this citizen and get this straight. When the king rapes a maid, that is all well and proper and his divine right. When a maid rapes the king, that is treason.
It is called, double standards. Much better then having just one standard which is the way of socialists and other enemies of freedom to screw those below you.
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Because filesharers being sued for huge sums of money affects ordinary people; MS infringing on someone else's copyright does not.
Or in other words, the public doesn't care as it doesn't affect them.
Who do you think the media is? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just who do you think the media is?
A loose conglomerate of huge corporations that represent corporate viewpoints with rare exception, or a group of journalists with integrity who focus on keeping regular citizens informed and government and business in check?
If Fox news picks the story up, it'll be about how a huge business can't possibly be expected to keep tabs on all of it's subsidiaries. Which will immediately be followed by another story bashing ACORN, all without a hint of irony.
WHAT?!?!? (Score:2, Insightful)
As someone who works with outsourced Chinese labor (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure this is simply a case of the engineers in China being told "make us this product", and when waiting until they deliver a finished product without questioning it properly. Their American MSFT overlords probably took no time to apply the same oversight that they would give to their domestic employees.
How do I know this? Because it's happened with my company before too.
And why does it happen? Language barrier and time zone difference.
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Does that myopic trick work with the profits for Microsoft as well, as in "profits made in foreign countries do not count"?
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It sounds to me that you're more cynical than it is healthy to be.
Yes, it does count as infringement, but we don't know if it's infringement that is perpetrated with the knowledge and consent of anyone in the corporate HQ.
I think Microsoft probably does a lot of immoral things, but I don't think they've done anything like this in quite some time.
Re:As someone who works with outsourced Chinese la (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, I think Microsoft will take responsibility - my personal bet is that the service isn't going to come back online, and someone is going to cop an absolute reaming within Microsoft (probably someone at MS China). The real question is whether MS will attempt to settle with Plurk to head off a lawsuit - I'd say they've probably got one justifiably incoming. Because MS takes such a strong anti-infringement position, they're not going to be able to just shrug this off.
Why is anyone surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone who wants to dispute this needs to review history first. And anyone who doubts this also needs to review history. Has Microsoft changed their ways? Maybe - but it doesn't look like it given stories like this.
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Wouldn't it be great if there was a large on line repository of knowledge that could be linked to when making broad claims and repeated insistence that a reader should "review history". That way you could make broad claims and actually link to the facts that you are referring to. We could call it the "World Wide Spider's Home" or something like that.
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You mean like http://msversus.org/ [msversus.org] ?
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Mod parent up!
Re:Why is anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
People always read too much into events like this. Microsoft is not a monolithic entity where every action is centrally planned and intentional. It's not like Steve Ballmer sat down with managers to figure which startup to rip off or part of the Microsoft induction is Ripoff 101.
What happened is most likely a subcontractor taking a shortcut.
If you want to blame Microsoft, put it down to poor IPR training and lacking due diligence. These are doubly important in developing countries that don't have the same awareness of these issues. I'm not defending Microsoft, but I'm sure code theft is something they genuinely try to avoid. At least where I work open source is an important part of our work and we are trained on how to use it correctly.
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In case that last part was ambiguous: I've never worked for Microsoft.
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The reports are too soft (Score:5, Informative)
Open Source (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, shocking (Score:2)
Not like this hasn't happened before...
Speaking of hypocrisy... (Score:5, Insightful)
How can this be stealing?
Nothing physical was lost, only data was copied and Plurk lost nothing!
Also, it's not piracy, because we all know that piracy only happens on ships at sea!
Therefore, it is only logical that the title of this article be changed to "Microsoft Shares Code with Microblogging Startup".
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LOL! Code is work but music isn't!
Come on, admit it. This one touches a nerve because computer programmers take ownership and pride in their software; they recognize the inherent value because they know how much time and mental effort goes into making software, scripts, and tools. However, those same individuals cannot ascribe the same value to a music file; they either blame the companies the artists work for (artists don't get more than a penny per download!), or that they aren't hurting anyone because mu
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You talk as if downloading latest Red Hot Chilly Peppers album is the same as ripping the said album, repackaging it as "Raga aginst teh muchine" and selling it.
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What's going on here? (Score:2)
What's all this, first there's an article about a patent troll and the discussion goes about nothing but communism, and then there's a post about Microsoft stealing code and the discussion goes about China! Why can't I see discussions about the topic anymore?
The people are the culture of the company location (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The people are the culture of the company locat (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a very hard thing to manage for any transcontinental company.
And that's why you either monitor things very closely or keep the code writing at home. Regardless of the fact that it's Microsoft China, it was Microsoft's choice to set up the organization, it was their choice to put whoever was in charge of managing the operation and the code from that organization in their position and, ultimately, they bear the responsibilities for those actions. Especially given that it's a company that screams to high heaven about IP rights (and specifically, issues with IP rights in the far east).
Bottom line, Microsoft deserves everything negative it gets from this.
Microsoft is furious. (Score:2)
It has developed lots of CASE tools and code obfuscation tools and mark up tools. They have procedures on how to massage stolen co
hypocrits? (Score:2)
Considering Microsoft's new ad campaign, we shouldn't be so surprised...
Windows 7 was my idea.
Literally, Windows 7 was my fucking idea.
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah! If only there were links in the story where you could go and see that it is actually a blatant and shameful copy-and-paste job, instead of just complaining about the editors and not bothering to actually RTFA for yourself.... If only....
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Another way of finding out if it was true would be to navigate to the offending website.
But of course, you won't see it any more, instead you will get the following (translated by Google from Chinese to English - so excuse the poor translation):
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)
Well, Microsoft has answered [techcrunch.com] some to it:
Earlier today, questions arose over a feature developed by a third-party vendor for our MSN China joint venture. We are working with our MSN China joint venture to investigate the situation.
Unfortunately, when these questions first arose, it was the middle of the night in China. Now that the day has begun in China, our teams are working hard to track down the information.
Here’s what we know at this point. Our MSN China joint venture contracted with an independent vendor to create a feature called MSN Juku that allowed MSN users to find friends via microblogging and online games. This MSN Juku feature was made available to MSN China users in November and is still in beta.
Because questions have been raised about the code base comprising the service, MSN China will be suspending access to the Juku beta feature temporarily while we investigate the matter fully.
We will provide additional information as we learn more.
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I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but it seems you misspelled "OMG teh internetz is bringing me into contact with poeplz from outher coutnriez!"
Re:It's a difficult problem for MS (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not someONE. A company of the size of Microsoft doesn't have the same person doing the UI design and the coding. Yet here they very clearly stole both the UI design AND the code. It's very clearly Microsoft China that is responsible. They don't get to lay the blame on some rogue coder.
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It's not someONE. A company of the size of Microsoft doesn't have the same person doing the UI design and the coding. Yet here they very clearly stole both the UI design AND the code. It's very clearly Microsoft China that is responsible. They don't get to lay the blame on some rogue coder.
You assume that anything MS sells or provides is written by MS. You're wrong [techcrunch.com]:
Earlier today, questions arose over a feature developed by a third-party vendor for our MSN China joint venture. We are working with our MSN China joint venture to investigate the situation.
Unfortunately, when these questions first arose, it was the middle of the night in China. Now that the day has begun in China, our teams are working hard to track down the information.
Here’s what we know at this point. Our MSN China joint
Off topic but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course it's not really Microsoft that copied it, it was someone within Microsoft, who clearly didn't think things through and is probably rather unlikely to be employed there much longer. Of course that doesn't mean it's not Microsoft's problem since they now have to do damage control due to the egg on their faces.
Sorry, this is off topic but hopefully still interesting...
I've often wondered how language shapes how we think about corporations. In the American dialect of English corporations tend to be treated as nouns where as in the British/Commonwealth dialect of English they are treated as collective nouns.
E.g. Microsoft is doing something - we're talking about the legal entity Microsoft vs Microsoft are doing something - we're talking about one of the company (employees) of Microsoft doing something.
It's a s
Re:This is slashdot. (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor old Microsoft, getting flamed for STEALING code. Clearly it's Slashdot that deserves the blame for mentioning it.
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But you can't STEAL code because duplication of a purely digital medium doesn't deprive anyone.
Wait, what's that you say? Oh yeah, I forgot it was Microsoft we were talking about for a minute there. Carry on.
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Hey wait a second! Isn't one of Slashdot's recurring themes copying != stealing?
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I think it stings more when someone does it for profit. :p
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Profit [cambridge.org] doesn't just mean monetary gain; file sharers also profit from their actions.
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Yes, and it applies to this case, too.
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And what code did they still from these companies? The controversies that I know with these companies are:
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I'm referring to the original theft of CP/M code that went into PC-DOS 1.0.
Ah yes, the sensational claim that there is a hidden command that prints Gary Kildall's name, but nobody will disclose the name of that command. That sounds plausible. Nobody has even attempted to prove that any copying has occured. And there had been, it would have been done by Seattle Computer Products and not Microsoft.
You may be right about stacker...
Don't worry, it is a common myth about code copying. I believed it myself until recently.
The Apple code theft I'm referring to is the Quicktime code that they stole to start Windows Media
It is not exactly a smoking gun that you make it out to be. A third party takes some code that they
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I don't know why you want to pretend that MS isn't a criminal organization, but come on, dude.. It's not hard to find this stuff.
The article you've linked to is very tangentially related to this case. It is about the court dismissing a defamation case brought by Tim Paterson (who wrote QDOS by himself, and later sold it to MS; he was working for Seattle Computer Products, and not for MS) against Harold Evans, who claimed in his book that CP/M was a "rip-off" of CP/M.
The article mentions specific claims by Evans:
"Evans also wrote that Paterson's DOS operating system appropriated the "look and feel" of CP/M, copied its user interface,
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