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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.
I wouldn't be surprised if they start supporting whoever is against him politically.
They have so much political power, it's nice to see that other countries are not necessarily "drinking the kool aid".
If this news came out in September of 2001, it was probably (figuratively) buried in the rubble of the World Trade Center.
A shocked and grieving nation could be forgiven for missing a legal event or two in France.
SoftImage is a Canadian-based CGI software company that was bought out by MS, plugged to Hollywood to be used in such films as Jurassic Park, and then promptly sold off. MS has since sold SoftImage and has no control of the code they write. It seems that the code in question was actually being used by SoftImage before it was bought out by MS. (although under license). This just seems like a red herring to shovel dirt on MS over an inherited problem from buying out SoftImage. Seems like the /. crowd is getting desperate for MS dirt to me...
Skipping commercials is theft.
Copying one of your CDs to keep in your car is theft.
Extracting the text from an ebook and feeding it through a text-to-speech converter is theft.
But when you're a multi-billion dollar company and you keep using software after your licence has been revoked, that's not theft.
It's all so clear now!
--
E_NOSIG
The biggest mystery is the obscurity of the story until now. "It looks to me as if the whole U.S. press missed the story," says Joe Barr, a technology journalist who frequently writes for IDG's LinuxWorld.
So let me get this straight. Two weeks after Sept. 11 and in the middle of the anthrax attacksthe U.S. press missed a story about $400,000 fine issued (IN FRANCE) against Microsoft (with $40 Billion on hand) for putting unauthorized code in an obscure software package that it no longer owns (Avid). No shit. Really! They must be biased!
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Microsoft has already been down this road with file compression code that went into MS DOS 6.
They're a business plain and simple. I'm sure they evaluate every decision and every public comment carefully in terms of cost, benefit, risk of getting sued and for how much money.
Just because some people [like me] hold that ethics exist which are above this kind of cost/benefit analysis does not mean that MS cannot make a successful business strategy from subjecting ethics to fiscally responsible analysis.
Shoot, it could well be argued that their entire antitrust trial is just a continuation of similar business practices. There may even be some at Microsoft who are actually surprised (but will not admit it for a few years) that they were able to continue as long as they have with their strategy.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Maybe MS isn't any more at fault than the school systems they are threatening, but if we hold them to the same standards as they hold others, they are guilty. MS is willing to claim that the owner of a computer system is guilty of piracy if that system has any unlicensed software on it, regardless of who actually put the software there. OK, now we hold them to the same standard: if you distribute programs without the appropriate licenses to do so, you're responsible, no excuses.
Miko O'Sullivan
This is not terribly surprising, considering that Microsoft has been down with OCC (other companies' code) for years.
Don't forget about one of the best arguments against Microsoft's FUD regarding the evils of OSS:
OSS is what keeps Windows connected to the Internet
-D
i know this will get modded, if at all, flamebait or offtopic, but i think the expression FUD has reached over-saturation. it's not really applicable in this case, beyond adding a veneer of bias to the article summary, and often is over applied in posts anyway.
i hereby offer an appeal to move away from the thick, dripping brush of FUD henceforth. let's see things as they are and not make summary pronouncements, eh? (and then we can unfreeze hell.)
go get it
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
This is honestly one of the funniest posts on /. for a while.
> Microsoft is undeniably a criminal organization
Because they are embroiled in a civil suit?
So... let's see, which of these heart-warmingly goodfellas do you recommend I start using instead: Adobe, Macromedia, Sony, Disney, US Steel, AOL TW, Walmart, Oracle, Nike?
> The next time someone asks why you don't run a
> Microsoft OS, simply reply that you don't feel
> like funding organized crime.
Ask any activist who has a worldview even slightly broader than yours, and they'll tell you that Microsoft would not even figure on their radar of exploitative transnational corporations. Walmart, Nike, etc would. Organized Crime my left foot. Some people take software too damn seriously.