Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft Takes Responsibility For GPL Violation

Posted by Soulskill on from the owning-up dept.

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."

3 of 364 comments (clear)

  1. Don't buy it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    This was just a smart move by MS. Get 3rd party to contribute GPL code while maintaining plausible deniability. Drop a hint (via 3rd party) to check program. Pull program and admit GPL code was unknowingly put in there and finally the payoff.........

      How long before MS marketing starts hinting to others that the GPL required them to release all their source code (their viral warnings came true)?

  2. Re:Microsoft acting responsibly? by HiThere · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Mine too. A few more thousand instances of them acting legally, and a few years of them not acting illegally and I might start thinking of them as not much worse than most mega-corporations.

    --

    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  3. No, this bad. Very bad. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    All I see is people saying, "Crikey, I thought I never see the day! Well done Microsoft for doing The Right Thing".

    However, I immediately saw this in a very different light.

    GPL violation is simply an issue of copyright violation. The moment you don't distribute the source code for your derived work, all rights granted to you under the GPL evaporate and your situation degenerates into the much simpler case of "We violated someone's copyright".

    In such cases, the remedy is usually some financial restitution, as agreed between the violator and the copyright holder, or sometimes decided by a civil judgement.

    However, Microsoft has willingly decided to open up the code. In this case, the value of the code is negligible: it's a minor utility. But this gives them excellent ammunition in their "GPL is a cancer" FUD battle.

    Expect in future versions of "Get The Facts" to contain phrases like, "In 2009 Microsoft accidentally shipped a utility containing code under the GPL. The utility had cost $270,000 to develop, but the end result of this was that the source code to the utility was released because of this single mistake"

    Microsoft never, ever does The Right Thing because it feels nice. It occasionally does the right thing because it happens to coincide with Microsoft's best interests. In this case, avoiding further bad publicity and getting a big wad of future FUD was better than the alternative.