An anonymous reader writes with an update to the news we discussed last weekend that a Windows 7 utility seemed to contain GPL code:
"Microsoft has confirmed that the Windows 7 USB/DVD tool did, in fact, use GPL code, and they have agreed to release the tool's source code under the terms of GPLv2. In a statement, Microsoft said creation of the tool had been contracted out to a third party and apologized for not noticing the GPL code during a code review."
The Y2012 bug is exaggerated. There isn't much Mayan code in reality and what's there probably won't generate any irrecoverable errors. Besides if there were going to be problems, we'd see systems that depended on dates after 2012 failing now. You'd see things like extremely unlikely coincidences and bizarre flukes of fate. Since we don't see th%@HG%#@%YG@$^[CARRIER LOST]
The main reason (as I understand it) that Mayan code never really caught on is because it regularly sacrifices files based around SUN java and mayaSQL code.
The New Age spiritually aware around the world are running up against the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar [today.com]. Mayan date 12.19.19.17.19 will occur on December 20, 2012, followed by the start of the fourteenth cycle, 13.0.0.0.0, on December 21st.
The event was first flagged by megalith scientist Terence McKenna. The end of the thirteenth cycle would break many megalith calculations — which conventionally use only the last four numbers to save on standing stones — with fears of spiritual collapse, disruption of ley lines, Ben Goldacre driving the chiropractors back into the sea and the return of the great god Quetzalcoatl and the consequent destruction of all life on earth.
Megalith programmers from 4000 years ago are being dredged up from peat bogs and pressed into service to get the henges updated to handle the turnover in the date. “It could be worse,” said one. “I could still be programming COBOL.”
Sceptics may choose the Winter Solstice on December 22nd (13.0.0.0.1) to attack, to take advantage of weakened qi. In case vital services are temporarily cut off, spiritually aware persons should stock up on crystals, copies of Sun Signs, a duly blessed tarot deck and other essentials. “They should get as well a suitable selection of blessed Hopi ear candles,” said Y2012 consultant Ravenwoo Granola, DD, 31, Ph.D (Univ. P.T. Barnum Mail-Order), “unicorn posters, holistic medicines, Silver RavenWolf books, purple clothing, protective pentacles — earrings for the ladies, pendants for the gents — make sure the house is absolutely robust in feng shui, your energetic vibrations are aligned and your Eostre rituals are up to date and keep only homeopathic quantities of money around. I’ll be happy to take on the danger of handling the rest. Here’s a price list. Everyfink for the spiritual survivalist.”
Others dismiss the problem. Sandra Noble of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies considers the Y2012 problem “a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.” However, Y2012 consultants deride “2012-deniers” for having their heads in the sand as to the vast and overwhelming spiritual importance to humanity of keeping their consultancies rolling.
What next, Linus stars in an "I'm a PC" commercial?
Those Windows 7 commercials where random people describe how they emailed Microsoft about making Windows 7 better all end with the person saying "... and Windows 7 was my idea!"
It all makes sense now. The people in the commercial weren't protected by the GPL, and MS took their ideas.
Nope. All that heat has to go somewhere. As hell freezes, Earth burns. Thermodynamics, woo. Unless hell is adiabatic. In which case I'm royally screwed. As is the first law.
And I was marked troll [slashdot.org] and ridiculed [slashdot.org] for saying that this is what they are obliged to do. From the bottom of my heart, fuck you slashdot. Also just disregard the mod points on the post, look at the amount of people responding without even thinking twice about what they are writing. There is no space here for truth, only hormones of feeble minded fools. And the "mods", being us who receive mod points to classify the value of information in posts, are no better in doing the job anymore than the rest of you. Slashdot is the fundamental definition of "defective by design", and you'll come to notice that only the idiots stay longer than average. This is my last post, and I truly hope nobody cares as that would prove it being the outmost right decision to take.
Oh and before you respond to this in some sad attempt of ridicule such as "cry me a river" or any other internet meme which has already been done close to an infinite amount of time, know that I won't be here to read it. So knowing that you may go ahead and waste your time.
Indeed. I applaud them for swiftly and appropriately handling the problem- to the point of taking the high-road for a change and offering the changed source code up instead of simply pulling it all out.
It doesn't make up for what they've done over the years (and apparently still doing...sadly...) but it's a good start in the right direction.
What is so awesome about MS staging a GPL violation that "forces" them to release the source code of their product? This will only feed the "GPL is cancer" mindset.
Obviously, they intentionally inserted GPL code so that they would be embarrassed, have to apologize, and release source code that they think is worth a lot of money! Wait, what?
It's the integrity of how they handled the situation... someone pointed out the possible GPL violation... they pull the tool and let everyone know they're looking into it... then they announce they've looked into it and as a result, they're going to release the source code in accordance with the GPL, something MS would rather not do, to honor the licence, and the community need for the tool.
If you worked at Microsoft, you'd know that it takes patience and time away from the horrific workload and schedules to code review every third-party thing that came through the door. When I worked at Microsoft, our vendor routinely used code they weren't supposed to EVEN THOUGH it was in their contract not to. I would sometimes come across a bug somewhere and I'd find something stolen off the net, and I'd have to pull it and reprimand the vendor, and then get them to do the work and pay them for it again.
It's easy to sit at your computer desk and pontificate about how MS is trying to pull a fast one on everyone. Shit, if you only knew how ingrained in the culture it is to homegrow everything, and steal nothing. Very strong corporate policies there at MS, and everyone is subject to disciplinary action if you've intentionally tried to pull a fast one in one way shape or form.
Trust me, the Program Manager who owns that tool is shitting in his/her pants, as it's going on their performance review for not tightening up on code quality. From my experience there, MS takes this shit seriously.
The reason why I am asking is so that I can get a feel for the validity of your statement about the coding culture amongst people working for Microsoft.
There are very few things you need to know here. Programmers for Microsoft:
Wanted to work for Microsoft
Convinced some people at Microsoft they would play along with their game
Survived the spinup to the Microsoft programming culture
Deliver the products you've come to expect
Whether your interest is as a prospective buyer of their output of a prospective employer of a former Microsoft programmer, the choice is clear. Microsoft carefully selects their programmers from the brightest and the best because they can. They filter for the folks who can coexist with them because they must. They drive them with the processes that they have. The programmers deliver what they can in this context and accept the limitations of the context as a condition of employment. Having survived this experience a programmer must necessarily have certain properties which, depending on your point of view, mark him "desirable" or "undesirable".
Well exactly. In this case Microsoft paid for what they believed was closed source code, it was a third party vendor that broke the GPL, but because Microsoft released the executable, well they're responsible.
Which raises a question - how do you check these things? If the vendor cut and pasted code in, and removed comments that identified its source and the source's licensing agreement how do you spot this? It's not feasible to download every single open source project and start a diff against every single file they contain, so how do you do it?
This was a USB/DVD burning tool offered on by Microsoft to help people install Windows 7 by burning the iso to USB/DVD. As far as I know, it is not included in Windows 7.
This tool isn't part of Windows 7, it's just used if you buy the download version of Windows 7 from the MS store. If it was actually part of Windows 7 i think there would have been a much bigger fuss!
If there is GPL code in Windows, the FSF would probably start a case that would be revolutionary in the computer world since it could mean opensourcing Windows.
No, let me repeat this once more.
The author was entitled to compensation for the illegal distribution of his code, and he could demand that Microsoft stopped distributing it. That's it. (Well, there are harsher penalties for copyright infringement, including jail time, but they wouldn't apply in this case.)
Microsoft instead CHOSE to accept the GPL license for that particular code (they obviously hadn't accepted the license before, since they weren't even aware that it applied). They are either using the GPLv3 infringement remediation clauses or just hoping that the author will reinstate their license. But that was a CHOICE they made. They could have just paid up and had someone replace the GPL code with proprietary code.
If it turned out that GPL code was spread throughout Windows (highly unlikely, I'd think), they would almost certainly prefer to pay up rather than make Windows Free Software.
Question: how can you tell GPL code is GPL code unless you know that it's GPL code? My point is that code reviews are cool, but they cannot catch things that the reviewers don't know to look for. And it's impossible for anyone to be familiar with every piece of GPL'd code out there, and it's impossible to build a database of such code. The best way to handle it was the way that they handled it. Someone found the error, told MS, and MS became compliant by releasing the code.
Give some credit, they did a code review, noticed the accusation was factual and did the right thing. As many times as microsoft has done the wrong thing, it's only right to credit them for doing the right thing this time.
The interesting question now is if they will retain this tool going forward, or replace it with another that is not GPL'd. It certainly sounds like an accident, so I am curious if good production code has any chance of trumping internal politics.
This is Slashdot! Everything MS does is bad. Everything, no questions asked! I mean, they won't even answer allegations that they sacrifice babies at the altar.
I predicted that they'd just need to make minor corrective action [slashdot.org]. Looks to me like that's exactly what happened. A replier to that post noted that as a prominent member of the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft would need to act above board and that this, if true, could be a serious problem. My take is that they just did that with this choice a mere week or so after the GPL code came to light.
So it appears to me that we're both right. Microsoft didn't need to fix much, but due to their leading position in an anti-piracy lobbying group, they needed to fix it quickly.
I wouldn't want to be the consulting company that provided Microsoft with this code. They're in some deep doo-doo now. Unfortunately, a lot of engineers are so clueless about licensing, as are their managers, that it is really possible that the person who did this didn't know it was a problem.
But this is not anything new for Microsoft. Microsoft started contributing to GCC around 10 years ago, for the former Unix services product. And this really serves their purpose if they are trying to scare people away from the GPL. "Microsoft forced to give up source code."
Where they are really hurting us now is in government policy and patented technology in interoperability facilities. Like the European Interoperability Framework going proprietary, and the MS-patented filesystem in next-generation FLASH devices. Consider stuff like that before you decide they are a "good citizen".
Yes. But you'd be shocked at the testimony I read, as an expert witness, from engineers and their managers. Incompetence is rampant. Unfortunately, the cases are settled and sealed, so I can't show you.
If I recall correctly, MS at one point tried to say that, if something like this happened, you'd have to release all your source code. Now we find that MS knows that you only have to release the source code of the program in question. Big difference. (Of course, if this was in Windows itself, the difference would not matter much to MS...)
DUH! Easier to gain forgiveness than permission. We know Microsoft knows that well. There was always a chance nobody would notice. It makes me wonder how much other GPL code they've ripped off over the years without getting caught.
I can't decide if you're trolling, or naive. Microsoft needs no permission to use GPL'd stuff. Neither does anyone else. It's a copy left. EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO USE IT!! There are a few restrictions on giving credit to the owners, releasing source, etc - but they are ALLOWED TO USE IT.
I can't imagine any individual, corporation, group, or consortium who might be denied the right to use GPL code, AS LONG AS they abide by the terms of the license.
By releasing (or making available) the source code, and giving proper credit to the authors, MS complies with the terms of the GPL license.
The main tool out there to do that is from Black Duck, and it's an unmitigated piece of trash that is designed for the sole purpose of scamming stupid CTOs and CEOs.
Their piece of crap database isn't even audited, so it attributes tons of code to people who stole it themselves and lists it under the wrong license. Then, if that wasn't enough, it produces so many false positives that anybody tasked with running it sets it up just enough to appease their incompetent boss while routing the results directly to
Hell yeah!, what an awesome third party contractor. Ripping off free software and selling it to corporations as non-free, closed source software for profit, these fuckers deserve a medal!
Vista probably cost them billions of dollars in revenue because, had they released a sooner, higher quality OS as their schedule initially dictated, their sales wouldn't have suffered. Not only that, but they'd have had two additional OS releases before Windows 7, or a global recession hurting their first decent OS release in nearly a decade.
Though if you think Microsoft executives seriously looked around the table and laughed at how they fooled everyone releasing a crappy product, I don't know if anything will convince you that you're wrong.
I'm sorry but this is just incredibly stupid. Are you telling me they purposely put GPL code into their code with the express intent of being caught?! Or that they wasted I don't know how many billions of dollars and took bad PR on Vista so that they could wow the world with Windows 7?! Then we have the troll-moderators going down the list looking for anything anti-Microsoft in the discussion to mod up. Lovely, you guys really do a lot for Slashdot's continued reputation.
a USB/DVD burning tool could hardly be analogized to an accelerator system in a car.
It'd be more equivalent to... I don't know... a cigarette lighter or something. This is just a utility that MS released to help people be able to burn a Windows 7 iso onto USB/DVD. Especially for use in netbooks and the like, I suppose.
What if it WAS a mistake? What if Microsoft didn't check the code/programmer claimed it wasn't GPL/whatever?
Because if it was a mistake, they appeared to have been doing the right thing. Furthermore, they weren't even selling this, nor was anyone else. If anything, it was a violation of GPL not copyright stuff.
I had no idea GPL people were so like the RIAA that they would want to "crucify" a company for possibly accidentally using (stealing? slashdot will call using GPL code against GPL license [and giving the result away for free]"stealing" but slashdot won't call downloading songs/movies stealing?) open source code without releasing the resulting open source. Sounds... very progressive. Encourages people to use GPL. "Hey, use our free software and code! It's great! Use it however you want! But if you don't follow the GPL you are a horrible, horrible company, even worse than people that illegally download copyrighted materials."
I like open source and GPL and all that. I also enjoy MS products. And I don't like double standards. If they knowingly took GPL code, that's bad. I don't like "guilty until proven innocent" nor comparisons of copyright to GPL...
What remedy does the GPL call for? As I understand it, it is to either release source or stop distributing. MS handled this error correctly. Calling for stronger sanctions would just drive more people away from GPL'd software.
They did "Man up", as it were. Yes, we are all pleasantly surprised. Inspired, I just halted my download of Windows 7, vowing then and there to pay full price.
Good on MS (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Good on MS (Score:5, Funny)
First I read some article about Gates praising Jobs [appleinsider.com], and now this?
I think the Mayans might be on to something.
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Re:Good on MS (Score:5, Funny)
I think the Mayans might be on to something.
The Y2012 bug is exaggerated. There isn't much Mayan code in reality and what's there probably won't generate any irrecoverable errors. Besides if there were going to be problems, we'd see systems that depended on dates after 2012 failing now. You'd see things like extremely unlikely coincidences and bizarre flukes of fate. Since we don't see th%@HG%#@%YG@$^[CARRIER LOST]
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MS - Mayan Sacrifices (Score:5, Funny)
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Y2012 problem: Mayan calendar runs out (Score:5, Funny)
The New Age spiritually aware around the world are running up against the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar [today.com]. Mayan date 12.19.19.17.19 will occur on December 20, 2012, followed by the start of the fourteenth cycle, 13.0.0.0.0, on December 21st.
The event was first flagged by megalith scientist Terence McKenna. The end of the thirteenth cycle would break many megalith calculations — which conventionally use only the last four numbers to save on standing stones — with fears of spiritual collapse, disruption of ley lines, Ben Goldacre driving the chiropractors back into the sea and the return of the great god Quetzalcoatl and the consequent destruction of all life on earth.
Megalith programmers from 4000 years ago are being dredged up from peat bogs and pressed into service to get the henges updated to handle the turnover in the date. “It could be worse,” said one. “I could still be programming COBOL.”
Sceptics may choose the Winter Solstice on December 22nd (13.0.0.0.1) to attack, to take advantage of weakened qi. In case vital services are temporarily cut off, spiritually aware persons should stock up on crystals, copies of Sun Signs, a duly blessed tarot deck and other essentials. “They should get as well a suitable selection of blessed Hopi ear candles,” said Y2012 consultant Ravenwoo Granola, DD, 31, Ph.D (Univ. P.T. Barnum Mail-Order), “unicorn posters, holistic medicines, Silver RavenWolf books, purple clothing, protective pentacles — earrings for the ladies, pendants for the gents — make sure the house is absolutely robust in feng shui, your energetic vibrations are aligned and your Eostre rituals are up to date and keep only homeopathic quantities of money around. I’ll be happy to take on the danger of handling the rest. Here’s a price list. Everyfink for the spiritual survivalist.”
Others dismiss the problem. Sandra Noble of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies considers the Y2012 problem “a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.” However, Y2012 consultants deride “2012-deniers” for having their heads in the sand as to the vast and overwhelming spiritual importance to humanity of keeping their consultancies rolling.
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Re:Good on MS (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Good on MS (Score:5, Funny)
What next, Linus stars in an "I'm a PC" commercial?
What, you mean like this [engadget.com]?
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Re:Good on MS (Score:4, Funny)
How about:
"I'm a PC"
"I'm a Mac"
Just as they are really getting into the commercial, a certain flightless waterfowl comes out and starts pecking both of them off the screen
Linux: The Other PC.
This would work great for all of those annoying Windows 7 ads too. Maybe we could have something like the original Energizer Bunny commercials.
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Re:Good on MS (Score:4, Funny)
What next, Linus stars in an "I'm a PC" commercial?
Those Windows 7 commercials where random people describe how they emailed Microsoft about making Windows 7 better all end with the person saying " ... and Windows 7 was my idea!"
It all makes sense now. The people in the commercial weren't protected by the GPL, and MS took their ideas.
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Re:Global Warming is a Hoax? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Good on MS (Score:5, Funny)
And I was marked troll [slashdot.org] and ridiculed [slashdot.org] for saying that this is what they are obliged to do. From the bottom of my heart, fuck you slashdot. Also just disregard the mod points on the post, look at the amount of people responding without even thinking twice about what they are writing. There is no space here for truth, only hormones of feeble minded fools. And the "mods", being us who receive mod points to classify the value of information in posts, are no better in doing the job anymore than the rest of you. Slashdot is the fundamental definition of "defective by design", and you'll come to notice that only the idiots stay longer than average. This is my last post, and I truly hope nobody cares as that would prove it being the outmost right decision to take.
Oh and before you respond to this in some sad attempt of ridicule such as "cry me a river" or any other internet meme which has already been done close to an infinite amount of time, know that I won't be here to read it. So knowing that you may go ahead and waste your time.
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Re:Good on MS (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed. I applaud them for swiftly and appropriately handling the problem- to the point of taking the high-road for a change and offering the changed source code up instead of simply pulling it all out.
It doesn't make up for what they've done over the years (and apparently still doing...sadly...) but it's a good start in the right direction.
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Re:Good on MS (Score:4, Insightful)
What is so awesome about MS staging a GPL violation that "forces" them to release the source code of their product? This will only feed the "GPL is cancer" mindset.
Obviously, they intentionally inserted GPL code so that they would be embarrassed, have to apologize, and release source code that they think is worth a lot of money! Wait, what?
Your post only gets more delusional from there.
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Re:Good on MS (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the integrity of how they handled the situation... someone pointed out the possible GPL violation... they pull the tool and let everyone know they're looking into it... then they announce they've looked into it and as a result, they're going to release the source code in accordance with the GPL, something MS would rather not do, to honor the licence, and the community need for the tool.
Integrity = Awesome, in my humble opinion...
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Re:Good on MS (Score:5, Informative)
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What you need to know... (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason why I am asking is so that I can get a feel for the validity of your statement about the coding culture amongst people working for Microsoft.
There are very few things you need to know here. Programmers for Microsoft:
Whether your interest is as a prospective buyer of their output of a prospective employer of a former Microsoft programmer, the choice is clear. Microsoft carefully selects their programmers from the brightest and the best because they can. They filter for the folks who can coexist with them because they must. They drive them with the processes that they have. The programmers deliver what they can in this context and accept the limitations of the context as a condition of employment. Having survived this experience a programmer must necessarily have certain properties which, depending on your point of view, mark him "desirable" or "undesirable".
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Re:Good on MS (Score:4, Interesting)
Well exactly. In this case Microsoft paid for what they believed was closed source code, it was a third party vendor that broke the GPL, but because Microsoft released the executable, well they're responsible.
Which raises a question - how do you check these things? If the vendor cut and pasted code in, and removed comments that identified its source and the source's licensing agreement how do you spot this? It's not feasible to download every single open source project and start a diff against every single file they contain, so how do you do it?
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wow, the beginning of the end (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft 7 legally contains GPL code.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This was a USB/DVD burning tool offered on by Microsoft to help people install Windows 7 by burning the iso to USB/DVD. As far as I know, it is not included in Windows 7.
Re:wow, the beginning of the end (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:wow, the beginning of the end (Score:5, Insightful)
If there is GPL code in Windows, the FSF would probably start a case that would be revolutionary in the computer world since it could mean opensourcing Windows.
No, let me repeat this once more.
The author was entitled to compensation for the illegal distribution of his code, and he could demand that Microsoft stopped distributing it. That's it. (Well, there are harsher penalties for copyright infringement, including jail time, but they wouldn't apply in this case.)
Microsoft instead CHOSE to accept the GPL license for that particular code (they obviously hadn't accepted the license before, since they weren't even aware that it applied). They are either using the GPLv3 infringement remediation clauses or just hoping that the author will reinstate their license. But that was a CHOICE they made. They could have just paid up and had someone replace the GPL code with proprietary code.
If it turned out that GPL code was spread throughout Windows (highly unlikely, I'd think), they would almost certainly prefer to pay up rather than make Windows Free Software.
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Microsoft acting responsibly? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Microsoft acting responsibly? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Code Review (Score:3, Insightful)
IDEA:
When you're that big a company you should review all of your code as much as you think the patent office should review others patents.
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Re:Code Review (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Code Review (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's impossible for anyone to be familiar with every piece of GPL'd code out there, and it's impossible to build a database of such code.
Well, at least one company [blackducksoftware.com] is trying to do just that, and to help companies avoid this very problem.
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Re:Code Review (Score:5, Insightful)
IDEA: When you're that big a company you should review all of your code as much as you think the patent office should review others patents.
so I should just stamp 'REJECTED' on the first page and call it a day?
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Wow look what happened... (Score:3, Funny)
Hey folks, did you see that pig fly?? It was quite impressive. So fat, and trumped. Never thought it would get off the ground... But there it went...
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Re:Wow look what happened... (Score:5, Funny)
Swine Flu.
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Give some credit (Score:5, Insightful)
Give some credit, they did a code review, noticed the accusation was factual and did the right thing. As many times as microsoft has done the wrong thing, it's only right to credit them for doing the right thing this time.
The interesting question now is if they will retain this tool going forward, or replace it with another that is not GPL'd. It certainly sounds like an accident, so I am curious if good production code has any chance of trumping internal politics.
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Re:Give some credit (Score:5, Funny)
This is Slashdot! Everything MS does is bad. Everything, no questions asked! I mean, they won't even answer allegations that they sacrifice babies at the altar.
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I was right for once (Score:4, Insightful)
So it appears to me that we're both right. Microsoft didn't need to fix much, but due to their leading position in an anti-piracy lobbying group, they needed to fix it quickly.
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Implications (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't want to be the consulting company that provided Microsoft with this code. They're in some deep doo-doo now. Unfortunately, a lot of engineers are so clueless about licensing, as are their managers, that it is really possible that the person who did this didn't know it was a problem.
But this is not anything new for Microsoft. Microsoft started contributing to GCC around 10 years ago, for the former Unix services product. And this really serves their purpose if they are trying to scare people away from the GPL. "Microsoft forced to give up source code."
Where they are really hurting us now is in government policy and patented technology in interoperability facilities. Like the European Interoperability Framework going proprietary, and the MS-patented filesystem in next-generation FLASH devices. Consider stuff like that before you decide they are a "good citizen".
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Re:cluess about licensing... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...gulp (Score:5, Funny)
Wha wha what just happened?
Someone hold me, I'm scared.
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Death of one old bag of baloney? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Death of one old bag of baloney? (Score:5, Informative)
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Have a candy bar (Score:3, Funny)
"I'm going to take back some of the things I've said about you, Microsoft. You--you've earned it."
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obvious! (Score:3, Interesting)
DUH! Easier to gain forgiveness than permission. We know Microsoft knows that well. There was always a chance nobody would notice. It makes me wonder how much other GPL code they've ripped off over the years without getting caught.
Re:obvious! (Score:4, Informative)
I can't decide if you're trolling, or naive. Microsoft needs no permission to use GPL'd stuff. Neither does anyone else. It's a copy left. EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO USE IT!! There are a few restrictions on giving credit to the owners, releasing source, etc - but they are ALLOWED TO USE IT.
I can't imagine any individual, corporation, group, or consortium who might be denied the right to use GPL code, AS LONG AS they abide by the terms of the license.
By releasing (or making available) the source code, and giving proper credit to the authors, MS complies with the terms of the GPL license.
It's really not that hard to understand, is it?
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The main tool out there to do that is from Black Duck, and it's an unmitigated piece of trash that is designed for the sole purpose of scamming stupid CTOs and CEOs.
Their piece of crap database isn't even audited, so it attributes tons of code to people who stole it themselves and lists it under the wrong license. Then, if that wasn't enough, it produces so many false positives that anybody tasked with running it sets it up just enough to appease their incompetent boss while routing the results directly to
Re:How did they miss that? (Score:5, Funny)
How did they miss that?
They used Bing to search for the code, and when it found nothing they assumed the code was original.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell yeah!, what an awesome third party contractor.
Ripping off free software and selling it to corporations as non-free,
closed source software for profit, these fuckers deserve a medal!
Re:a big round of thanks to that outside contracto (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:A setup? (Score:5, Insightful)
Vista probably cost them billions of dollars in revenue because, had they released a sooner, higher quality OS as their schedule initially dictated, their sales wouldn't have suffered. Not only that, but they'd have had two additional OS releases before Windows 7, or a global recession hurting their first decent OS release in nearly a decade.
Though if you think Microsoft executives seriously looked around the table and laughed at how they fooled everyone releasing a crappy product, I don't know if anything will convince you that you're wrong.
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Re:A setup? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
a USB/DVD burning tool could hardly be analogized to an accelerator system in a car.
It'd be more equivalent to... I don't know ... a cigarette lighter or something. This is just a utility that MS released to help people be able to burn a Windows 7 iso onto USB/DVD. Especially for use in netbooks and the like, I suppose.
Re:Oh, so it's ok then (Score:4, Insightful)
What if it WAS a mistake? What if Microsoft didn't check the code/programmer claimed it wasn't GPL/whatever?
Because if it was a mistake, they appeared to have been doing the right thing. Furthermore, they weren't even selling this, nor was anyone else. If anything, it was a violation of GPL not copyright stuff.
I had no idea GPL people were so like the RIAA that they would want to "crucify" a company for possibly accidentally using (stealing? slashdot will call using GPL code against GPL license [and giving the result away for free]"stealing" but slashdot won't call downloading songs/movies stealing?) open source code without releasing the resulting open source. Sounds ... very progressive. Encourages people to use GPL. "Hey, use our free software and code! It's great! Use it however you want! But if you don't follow the GPL you are a horrible, horrible company, even worse than people that illegally download copyrighted materials."
I like open source and GPL and all that. I also enjoy MS products. And I don't like double standards. If they knowingly took GPL code, that's bad. I don't like "guilty until proven innocent" nor comparisons of copyright to GPL...
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Re:Oh, so it's ok then (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Fair Play (Score:4, Funny)
They did "Man up", as it were. Yes, we are all pleasantly surprised. Inspired, I just halted my download of Windows 7, vowing then and there to pay full price.
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