Microsoft's Overlooked Code Theft

Like2Byte was one of many readers to point out that "Newsforge is reporting that Microsoft was fined by a French court for three million francs "because it illegally included another company's proprietary source code in SoftImage 3D," something which (as the story points out) went mostly unremarked at the time. This is one of the points mentioned by Peruvian Senator David Villanueva Nuñez in his response to Microsoft FUD.

Comments

I think it *is* Microsoft's fault

[tinahdee]

See, the problem with that theory, is that Microsoft knew what the deal was before they bought SoftImage. Right before MS bought SoftImage, they sent them over to Syn'X to present this new deal, i.e., hand over the rights to your code or it's no go. They probably thought Syn'X would cave in, but they walked instead, and that killed SoftImage's usefulness to MS. It doesn't take a lot of deep speculation to imagine that MS/SoftImage probably had some commitments with the product already, and got kind of burned when Syn'X pulled out of the deal.

Tina

Weak Argument

[maggard]

Disclaimer: I walked by Softimage's offices a few minutes ago on my way for a pastry

MS's involvement in this was pretty minimal. They bought Softimage, there was no, shall we say "meeting of the minds" and they soon gave up and sold 'em off. Any IP violations were pretty much Softimage-responsability and not their corporate masters du jure.

Of course Softimage is notable for being, as far as I know, the only shop that was ever bought up by MS that then succesfully fought it's way free.