Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft's Overlooked Code Theft

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the respect-for-intellectual-property dept.

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.

5 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. Re:A couple points. by Rupert · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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    But when you're a multi-billion dollar company and you keep using software after your licence has been revoked, that's not theft.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
  2. HAHAHAHA by aengblom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  3. Maybe that's not the point by mikosullivan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  4. moderators, get ready by macsox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  5. Re:Perhaps the next time... by cygnusx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.