Microsoft Source Follow-Up

shystershep writes "It's official. Microsoft admits that 'portions of the Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 source code were illegally made available on the Internet.' No more details, although it seems clear that it is only a portion of the code. Microsoft is, naturally, downplaying its impact, while everyone else is busy speculating about how serious this could get." A lot of you apparently haven't read yesterday's story. An investigation of the code is already underway.

Comments

Re:No step 2 necessary for step 3

[kin_korn_karn]

It depends on if Bush wins or not. If he does, then OSS is dead.

Parallels with xbox dev scene - future of Linux?

[BenBenBen]

This could lead to a similar situation to that seen within the Xbox developers scene - there's software developed to run on a modded xbox without using Microsoft's copyrighted XDK, which is semi-not-quite-yet-illegal and therefore can be considered "virgin" or "white", and software developed very much with the XDK which is illegal and which you have to look slightly harder for.

Could we see Virgin, White, Corporate Linux and alongside it dark Linux products, built to no legal compliance and used by the quite large group of people who don't care about copyright issues? As the flourishing 'piracy' culture [I'd guestimate 70-80% of any sample population will have borrowed/copied/cracked/shared/downloaded/shoplift ed software or content in their possession] demonstrates, there's a hella lot of them...

Will keeping the 2 seperate be one of the main challenges to Linux growth, development and ultimately commercial success?

Just my 1/50th of a theory.