The toman diaries

Windows NT4/2000 Source code leaked

lørdag, februar 14, 2004

Yep. Someone has brought the source-code of w2k and nt4 into the public.

This will be really interesting to see play out. Microsoft has already posted a note on their press page saying it's not a result of their shared source sheme nor is it leaking in-house. So who did? The obvious answer is an ex-employee. It appears it comes from someone at mainsoft.com; a crash-log generated by Linux(!) when the editor Vi crashed, reveal details of the state of the system at that time, ca 2000... (Mainsoft does UNIX<->Windows porting etc. of software, MS is one of their customers)

But the official answer will probably be something like an ex-employee currently working on an open source project while stealing code from windows and forgetting for a moment that windows wasn't open source.

I've always wondered, how much open source is in Microsoft products? We know much BSD stuff is in (they can say that), but why reinvent the weel when nobody can catch you copying it anyway?

In the days of SCO suits and microsoft loosing the offence, I can't help wonder if this is a simple (but risky) ploy by MS themself, with the intention of scaring customers away from open source. Yes. If I was deciding purchase of some systems, I'd stay away from software where unauthorized MS code may turn up, cause MS has a legal system of their own and I don't have enough money to fight that.
But it might backfire on MS too. What if lots of open source code is found there? Code that isn't BSD or public domain, only with the copyright comments snipped? Or did they make availiable only original code? (Unsurprisingly, Microsoft is playing down the security aspect while telling reporters that the main issue here is Intellectual Property.)

How much will this add to the confusion of source code (Will your neighbours put up a taller fence if you tell them you write open source code)?

Who's first in suing who?