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Microsoft Steals Code From Microblogging Startup
Readers davidlougheed and TSHTF both let us know that microblogging service Plurk reported today that Microsoft China not only copied look and feel from its interface, but also copied raw code from Plurk's service, when it released its own microblogging service called MSN Juku (or Mclub). In instances of the code released on the Plurk blog, the layout, code structure, and variable names were very similar or in some cases 100% identical. The story has been covered in multiple media sources. The software theft is hypocritical, given Microsoft's past threats against Chinese software piracy."
the Chinese portion of anything is going to deny it's theft and call the original coders liars. The Chinese are great about this, the government mindset is embedded in the younger citizens - such as "We do not filter our Internet access, we have a few routing issues."
Yeah, right.
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I wonder how much our dear kdawson checked the background of the history before he began salivate when he saw the words "Michrosoft" and "steals" in the same sentence... Oh well....
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
"In the statement, it noted that the Juku code had been provided by an independent vendor."
Seems like microsost is having a bad run lately with third party vendors.
That's why, when I copy source code I always change all variables, functions and classes to a, b, c, ...
Copyright immunity and job security all in one.
at least they made it open source this time
Any opportunity to flame Microsoft will be taken advantage of.
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
As an aside, I wonder how feasible it is to put some automated checks in place to compare a signature of some code against every other known piece of open source (or otherwise?) out there to search for similarities?
rarely reaches the mass media news? but when a filesharer "steals" some software things happens in a completely different way.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
Plurk. A battlecry for the ages. Rally Plurk mingions! Plurk?
Microsoft? Hypocrites? NO WAY! Welcome to what you can do when you have exponentially more money than the people you're stealing from.
I'm sure this is simply a case of the engineers in China being told "make us this product", and when waiting until they deliver a finished product without questioning it properly. Their American MSFT overlords probably took no time to apply the same oversight that they would give to their domestic employees.
How do I know this? Because it's happened with my company before too.
And why does it happen? Language barrier and time zone difference.
Anyone who wants to dispute this needs to review history first. And anyone who doubts this also needs to review history. Has Microsoft changed their ways? Maybe - but it doesn't look like it given stories like this.
Reading most of the press reports it would seem that the allegation is based on similarities in the look, shown by screenshots. If you read from Plurk's post you will see that the code is identical apart from some variables that were called *Plurk* and got renamed to *Wall*... It sounds much more serious this way.
In the past, MS has been caught red-handed stealing code from DR, from Stacker, and from Apple. IBM showed them how to buy their way out of jail.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Maybe MS thought it was MIT/BSD licensed because this is what you get when you use that license.
This is why open source will ultimately win. It's just too tempting to use someone else's code rather than writing your own code to do the same thing. The fact that a large software company like Microsoft has succumbed to this simply shows how widely adopted this mindset is becoming. Of course, Microsoft was still wrong to do this.
so thats what happening behind the great wall . //0_o
Ding!
It's extremely likely that this project was designed and built in China, and the Chinese aren't exactly known for their respect for copyright. Things like this happen all the time, and they don't see it as "wrong" like Americans do.
Ex: http://www.japanprobe.com/2007/05/02/disneyland-in-china/
Ok, so when Microsoft steals chinese code it must be Microsoft chinese doing the stealing, so it doesn't count?
Does that myopic trick work with the profits for Microsoft as well, as in "profits made in foreign countries do not count"?
Ah the good old "It wasn't me!"-defense. Big corporations are never responsible. It was always somebody else's fault. Good for them.
After you pay my equivelent petition-fee, then I'll pay up; and wouldn't you know that the right I granted you to petition me is the same value of what you claim I owe you so we are even. Nice doing business.
Does anyone know what kind of legal action plurk can take? they claim copyright of their content, but does that cover code? and since this is in China who knows what kind of rights plurk has...
What more else needs to be said? There are no new ideas just people hybridizing previous ideas.
Oh, I think Microsoft will take responsibility - my personal bet is that the service isn't going to come back online, and someone is going to cop an absolute reaming within Microsoft (probably someone at MS China). The real question is whether MS will attempt to settle with Plurk to head off a lawsuit - I'd say they've probably got one justifiably incoming. Because MS takes such a strong anti-infringement position, they're not going to be able to just shrug this off.
Not like this hasn't happened before...
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Is it first time?
How does it follow that open source will win (presumably, by winning you mean that closed-source sales of software will no longer be economically viable) as a result of Microsoft violating someone's copyright?
Of course it's not really Microsoft that copied it, it was someone within Microsoft, who clearly didn't think things through and is probably rather unlikely to be employed there much longer. Of course that doesn't mean it's not Microsoft's problem since they now have to do damage control due to the egg on their faces.
Sorry, this is off topic but hopefully still interesting...
I've often wondered how language shapes how we think about corporations. In the American dialect of English corporations tend to be treated as nouns where as in the British/Commonwealth dialect of English they are treated as collective nouns.
E.g. Microsoft is doing something - we're talking about the legal entity Microsoft vs Microsoft are doing something - we're talking about one of the company (employees) of Microsoft doing something.
It's a small but, I think, interesting difference. At what point would can a corporation be blamed for the actions of it employees? This case involving Microsoft will probably be sorted out without much fuss but in other, more serious cases, such as corporate manslaughter it's a much stickier issue.
How can this be stealing?
Nothing physical was lost, only data was copied and Plurk lost nothing!
Also, it's not piracy, because we all know that piracy only happens on ships at sea!
Therefore, it is only logical that the title of this article be changed to "Microsoft Shares Code with Microblogging Startup".
Get this citizen and get this straight. When the king rapes a maid, that is all well and proper and his divine right. When a maid rapes the king, that is treason.
It is called, double standards. Much better then having just one standard which is the way of socialists and other enemies of freedom to screw those below you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What's all this, first there's an article about a patent troll and the discussion goes about nothing but communism, and then there's a post about Microsoft stealing code and the discussion goes about China! Why can't I see discussions about the topic anymore?
Thats three strikes, they must close down and dismantle!
Folks it's Microsoft "China" which means the Chinese culture working in a Microsoft owned building in China. There is likely major cultural misunderstanding or forces that are at work here beyond the fact the brand is Microsoft. That's a very hard thing to manage for any transcontinental company.
the Chinese portion of anything is going to deny it's theft and call the original coders liars. The Chinese are great about this, the government mindset is embedded in the younger citizens - such as "We do not filter our Internet access, we have a few routing issues."
Yeah, right.
Have you even visited China, or are you just talking out of your ass? Let me guess, you think that everything is cheap and ripped off here too, right? As someone who moved to China from the U.S., and who works with young Chinese people every day, let me clue you into something: you hear a lot of nonsense and propaganda about China, and there are a lot of assumptions that are wrong. Fortunately for people like you, not enough Chinese people can speak English fluently to slap stuff like this down on Slashdot. That's why there's an enormous gap in English sources about all things related to China, and a couple popular misconceptions get repeated ad nauseum because nobody bothers to read about China or come here. So you and the rest know...
* Everyone in China knows that certain sites are blocked
* Most blocked sites are English anyways
* People don't really care because their Chinese stuff works fine
As for the whole political situation, most educated people here see the problems with American democracy and economics and realize it's not the right way for them. They do complain about many problems with the government, and most people are actually resentful toward the rich (unlike in the U.S. where everyone calls them "successful" and wants to kiss their asses). The newspapers will happily report on these topics, and people can definitely voice their opinions about a number of issues. If you think that's not enough, try voicing certain views critical of capitalism or business in American papers and see how far you get.
As for topics like Tibet, most Chinese only know the other half of the story that you didn't hear. That is, Tibet was basically a serfdom where the temples and a few wealthy individuals owned all the land, and people were bound to them. They had to pay extremely high taxes, had no education, and they had their eyes gouged out or their hands chopped off if they committed crimes (by Buddhist monks even), which you can easily find photos of. They couldn't even marry without permission from the land owner, and they generally lived in abject poverty (and still do). Tibet probably deserves independence, but most Americans only think that Tibet was a magical fairy land where everyone was happy until the big bad Chinese came. In reality, most peoples' lives there suck now, but they sucked before too. Just like the Chinese have something to lose if Tibet became independent, the monks lost a lot of privilege too, so make what you will of that.
So you see, you are just hearing the other side of the propaganda. You are being duped by political forces that are often more pervasive than the Chinese government could ever hope to be, because Americans don't even know that they are hearing bullshit. Market forces just control the whole thing, and keep the true puppet masters of the country safe. They don't need to do anything forceful because the system works to quietly keep people quiet about certain things. If we could occupy their markets tomorrow and profit from them, you can bet that the American media would magically fall in love with China in a heartbeat.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
this is a typical kdawson story, meant to flame the outrage and fog the mind.
i bet this is a case of the bloggers seeing a line like " if 1 then: 3 " which is so generic and thinking it belongs to them SCO style.
I think your comment says more about you than about kdawson
Sadly what it says about you is less than flattering, but I suppose it is normal for slashdotters not to RTFA
Had you even bothered to RTFC you would have read that other posters like this one http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1478420&cid=30441578 commented that the lines of code shown were identical except they renamed plurk to walls
With a just a mouseckick on the summary you can see the longish variable names with longish method names identical in the plurk and Microsoft code - they didn't even attempt to obfuscate the plagiarism.
Is this a typical timmarhy comment trying to show what a brainless twat he is?
That's a very hard thing to manage for any transcontinental company.
And that's why you either monitor things very closely or keep the code writing at home. Regardless of the fact that it's Microsoft China, it was Microsoft's choice to set up the organization, it was their choice to put whoever was in charge of managing the operation and the code from that organization in their position and, ultimately, they bear the responsibilities for those actions. Especially given that it's a company that screams to high heaven about IP rights (and specifically, issues with IP rights in the far east).
Bottom line, Microsoft deserves everything negative it gets from this.
That is all.
Yeah right! What about burst.com - that happened in China too?
the right of conquest? Every powerful country, even self-proclaimed anti-imperialists like the Communist countries, have recognized it. Their only complaints have been when it didn't serve them. If Mexico had won the Mexican-American War, you damn well better believe that they'd be saying that they have a right to Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia right now.
I'm sure this is simply a case of the engineers in China being told "make us this product", and when waiting until they deliver a finished product without questioning it properly. Their American MSFT overlords probably took no time to apply the same oversight that they would give to their domestic employees.
I don't think this was a case of MSFT outsourcing work to their Chinese division. I think this was MSFT China "developing" a product intended for the Chinese market. Their "American MSFT Overlords" probably knew nothing about it.
At any rate, "stealing" intellectual property is a way of life in China. It's not surprising that it happened. What is surprising is that it wasn't a Chinese company "stealing" from an American company.
This could be seen as a test case. Software which is out in the open and freely available for download (that is the web by definition) cannot be stolen.
It has developed lots of CASE tools and code obfuscation tools and mark up tools. They have procedures on how to massage stolen code and how to randomly relocate code blocks, variable names, function names etc so that the code borrowing would be completely masked and it would appear as though a clueless overpaid hack had written the code.
Remember? All that talk about relocating code blocks in binaries and randomly scrambling the address space each time the link loader loads and executable into memory? All that research to move around just binaries? The claim is "when buffer overflow error occurs, each run will behave differently, and so the viruses could not reliably reproduce". If they can scramble binaries, how hard is it going to be to scramble source? What is the big point in developing source code scrambling procedures and hacking the code obfuscation tool to rename variables if the developers are not using it to correctly and clearly mask the stolen code.
Some flunkie in Microsoft is sure going to have his skin flayed.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Just who do you think the media is?
A loose conglomerate of huge corporations that represent corporate viewpoints with rare exception, or a group of journalists with integrity who focus on keeping regular citizens informed and government and business in check?
If Fox news picks the story up, it'll be about how a huge business can't possibly be expected to keep tabs on all of it's subsidiaries. Which will immediately be followed by another story bashing ACORN, all without a hint of irony.
Considering Microsoft's new ad campaign, we shouldn't be so surprised...
Windows 7 was my idea.
Literally, Windows 7 was my fucking idea.
did anyone else read it that way?
It sounds to me that you're more cynical than it is healthy to be.
Yes, it does count as infringement, but we don't know if it's infringement that is perpetrated with the knowledge and consent of anyone in the corporate HQ.
I think Microsoft probably does a lot of immoral things, but I don't think they've done anything like this in quite some time.
*puts finger in ears and chants:
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
So summing up all the Slashdot arguments leads me to believe that Chinese-Americans are the ultimate evil.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I think many people are being a bit kind to Microsoft here. Regardless of how difficult it is to monitor this it is their responsibility. Microsoft is a key driver of the Business Software Alliance. Read what the BSA has to say here:
"Many businesses, both large and small, face serious legal risks because of software piracy. Under the law, a company can be held liable for its employees’ actions. If an employee is installing unauthorized software copies on company computers or acquiring illegal software through the Internet, the company can be sued for copyright infringement. This is true even if the company’s management was unaware of the employee’s actions."
If Microsoft wants to shirk responsibility here, maybe they should recommend that the BSA return all monies to companies that were charged even although they were unaware of their employees' actions.
Microsoft Investigating Questions over MSN China joint venture's Juku feature
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/dec09/12-14Statement.mspx?rss_fdn=Press%20Releases
If this is CSS code they "stole", how many web developers have ripped off code from other sites? I'd wager 100% have borrowed something. I challenge you to find one site that was completely constructed by reading the documentation and writing all such code from scratch. Also, in this case how much of the "code" was original work vs scraped off other sites?
remember this?
http://tech.mit.edu/V122/N27/long5_27.27w.html
- China has the Great Firewall.
- The US has illegal wiretaps.
Tiananmen Square vs. Tiananmen Square
Illegal wiretaps are nasty invasions of privacy and are a wrong that the U.S. government committed. You can read about and debate them in thousands of blog posts and news articles, none of which are censored. That's how you know about it. The same cannot be said of many things within China.
Cultural relativism is the most lazy mental posture there is. "Hey, we're all different and about equally evil." Then it's ok to drift through life, I guess?
Humans and human institutions make mistakes and commit evil acts sometimes--including the U.S. The value of the U.S. system is the freedom to acknowledge, publicize, and debate them, and effect change. Since 2006 we've switched out the leadership of our legislative and executive branches--against the will of the incumbents. Of course I won't be surprised if you apply a similar cultural relativistic point of view to that too: "both parties are the same, they're equally evil." How convenient.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Hmm, I read the TFA and didn't see any mention of what copyright notices / licenses the code was under. And I also notice that the code snippets shown have no comments.
So just to play devil's advocate....
1) javascript gets sent to the client browser
2) to make things faster and cheaper, plurk attempts to reduce bandwidth by stripping comments from the java script
3) what legal ramifications are there if I use code that was given to me(sent to my browser) that has no specified restrictions?
Oh, but this is slashdot..."DOWN WITH MICROSOFT"
texans freely merged with united states, it was not an "annexation".
santa anna destroyed mexico. yucatan, coahuila and texas left.
santa anna attacked texas and lost.
too bad for him. good for texas!
screw yankee apologogistic revisionism.
Just because you using gooks to do your dirty work doesn't make it right or excusable. Mmkay?
It;s only Bad when someone else does it not me silly! Besides it;s not really stealing if you don't get caught,ooops!
Europeans have this grand view of America based primarily on Television and the East Coast which looks rather terrible. Europe's countries are like some of our bigger states. The differences between the basic values of people in California, Texas and the upper East Coast are quite pronounced. Hell, those of us in north California, don't even want to be part of the US anymore. We'd be just fine going on our on way with our friend in Oregon and Washington. Having one of the world top 10 economies and being nearly completely self sufficient. As it is now the rich states like California subsidize the many failed states of our great union.
But back on point; the USA is quite a diverse country with many different mindsets across the entire spectrum depending on where you are. Don't assume just because someone is American they believe X. That's akin to saying all French and Germans think the same.
--- I do not moderate.
Right, and if you point a finger back far enough, some germ gets blamed for everything.
Bad reasoning. The blame should always be on those who committed the act (which wasn't "Microsoft" as a whole).
Steal public code. Sell as private closed application. Welcome to Open Source Land kids!
Yes, you and a thousand other basement dwellers worldwide can write "open source" code that will be used in private companies for their personal gain using your labor.
Cheers!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The irony is that Plurk was probably coded on pirated copies of windows.
My guess is that it will be revealed to have been Bill G himself. This whole philanthropy thing is a cloak for his obsession with stealing html and changing the style sheets. Isn't that essentially how the web was built?
The English-speaking media seem to fail to mention that Plurk is Taiwan based[1]... not in the People's Republic of China.
----
[1] http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Microsoft-hat-Aerger-in-Asien-886233.html (German)
Want to hear the voice of GOD? cat
My sympathy to the developers from Plurk.
However, he Chinese have been stealing and copying everybody's work for decades. Their whole industrial society is based on that premise.
How, they get a taste of their own game and feel what it is like to rob somebody of their intellectual property. A good lesson; I hope more incidents like this happen so that the society can elevate above the current status quo of rampant piracy.
I totally agree with keeping the code writing at home. Outsourcing it causes obvious problems like this recent one, and likely isn't as cost effective in the long run all things considered. Also agreed they bear the responsibility. In fact seeing another article on Slashdot today saying Microsoft has taken the responsibility and suspected the offending project - so they are doing as they should and not trying to hide or justify it. All in all, hope this is a good enough reasons for such companies to decide to keep their code writing at home. My fingers are crossed.
Microsoft is Microsoft... don't blame a particular county, this happens more often than we know.