Slashdot Mirror
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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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.
Yeah! If only there were links in the story where you could go and see that it is actually a blatant and shameful copy-and-paste job, instead of just complaining about the editors and not bothering to actually RTFA for yourself.... If only....
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
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.
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.
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.
It's not someONE. A company of the size of Microsoft doesn't have the same person doing the UI design and the coding. Yet here they very clearly stole both the UI design AND the code. It's very clearly Microsoft China that is responsible. They don't get to lay the blame on some rogue coder.
I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but it seems you misspelled "OMG teh internetz is bringing me into contact with poeplz from outher coutnriez!"
I hate printers.
Wouldn't it be great if there was a large on line repository of knowledge that could be linked to when making broad claims and repeated insistence that a reader should "review history". That way you could make broad claims and actually link to the facts that you are referring to. We could call it the "World Wide Spider's Home" or something like that.
I hate printers.
Poor old Microsoft, getting flamed for STEALING code. Clearly it's Slashdot that deserves the blame for mentioning it.
People always read too much into events like this. Microsoft is not a monolithic entity where every action is centrally planned and intentional. It's not like Steve Ballmer sat down with managers to figure which startup to rip off or part of the Microsoft induction is Ripoff 101.
What happened is most likely a subcontractor taking a shortcut.
If you want to blame Microsoft, put it down to poor IPR training and lacking due diligence. These are doubly important in developing countries that don't have the same awareness of these issues. I'm not defending Microsoft, but I'm sure code theft is something they genuinely try to avoid. At least where I work open source is an important part of our work and we are trained on how to use it correctly.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Yeah, what's probably happened is they've hooked up a quick database to store users / tweets etc Then all the front end work is just shamelessly taken and they only have to work on making a similar API for it to work with. I wouldn't be surprised to find that a Plurk client would just work with the MSN one if you change the URL. The design is also painfully similar, so I imagine they just threw on the microsoft branding on the front and uploaded some new images and colours in the CSS.
my band is more brutal techno punk than yours
You mean like http://msversus.org/ ?
The verse: "and wouldn't you know that the right I granted you to petition me " is part of the lyrics from my latest hit "Petition me, my love".
You owe me $65.000.000 in copyright fees and damages to my artistic image.
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.
Well, Microsoft has answered some to it:
Earlier today, questions arose over a feature developed by a third-party vendor for our MSN China joint venture. We are working with our MSN China joint venture to investigate the situation.
Unfortunately, when these questions first arose, it was the middle of the night in China. Now that the day has begun in China, our teams are working hard to track down the information.
Here’s what we know at this point. Our MSN China joint venture contracted with an independent vendor to create a feature called MSN Juku that allowed MSN users to find friends via microblogging and online games. This MSN Juku feature was made available to MSN China users in November and is still in beta.
Because questions have been raised about the code base comprising the service, MSN China will be suspending access to the Juku beta feature temporarily while we investigate the matter fully.
We will provide additional information as we learn more.
But you can't STEAL code because duplication of a purely digital medium doesn't deprive anyone.
Wait, what's that you say? Oh yeah, I forgot it was Microsoft we were talking about for a minute there. Carry on.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
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".
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.
well you could use google but I'm sure that's to complicated, so go here; http://aaxnet.com/topics/msinc.html#law
My karma is not a Chameleon.
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
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.
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.
*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)
I'm referring to the original theft of CP/M code that went into PC-DOS 1.0.
Ah yes, the sensational claim that there is a hidden command that prints Gary Kildall's name, but nobody will disclose the name of that command. That sounds plausible. Nobody has even attempted to prove that any copying has occured. And there had been, it would have been done by Seattle Computer Products and not Microsoft.
You may be right about stacker...
Don't worry, it is a common myth about code copying. I believed it myself until recently.
The Apple code theft I'm referring to is the Quicktime code that they stole to start Windows Media
It is not exactly a smoking gun that you make it out to be. A third party takes some code that they ported for Apple (or maybe it was new code that they wrote as part of that process) and they used it for another job that they did for Intel. Microsoft joins later on. Who knows if they knew where the code originated? It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a consultant has reused work that they had done previously for another client.
To top it off, the link you provided in another message refers to some analysis where some of this copied code has an Intel copyright on it. It really is a stretch to say that this is code that Microsoft copied.
- 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.
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?
It's not someONE. A company of the size of Microsoft doesn't have the same person doing the UI design and the coding. Yet here they very clearly stole both the UI design AND the code. It's very clearly Microsoft China that is responsible. They don't get to lay the blame on some rogue coder.
You assume that anything MS sells or provides is written by MS. You're wrong:
Earlier today, questions arose over a feature developed by a third-party vendor for our MSN China joint venture. We are working with our MSN China joint venture to investigate the situation.
Unfortunately, when these questions first arose, it was the middle of the night in China. Now that the day has begun in China, our teams are working hard to track down the information.
Here’s what we know at this point. Our MSN China joint venture contracted with an independent vendor to create a feature called MSN Juku that allowed MSN users to find friends via microblogging and online games. This MSN Juku feature was made available to MSN China users in November and is still in beta.
Because questions have been raised about the code base comprising the service, MSN China will be suspending access to the Juku beta feature temporarily while we investigate the matter fully.
We will provide additional information as we learn more.
I don't know why you want to pretend that MS isn't a criminal organization, but come on, dude.. It's not hard to find this stuff.
The article you've linked to is very tangentially related to this case. It is about the court dismissing a defamation case brought by Tim Paterson (who wrote QDOS by himself, and later sold it to MS; he was working for Seattle Computer Products, and not for MS) against Harold Evans, who claimed in his book that CP/M was a "rip-off" of CP/M.
The article mentions specific claims by Evans:
"Evans also wrote that Paterson's DOS operating system appropriated the "look and feel" of CP/M, copied its user interface, and "ripped-off" CP/M."
I think that no-one in a sane mind would argue that QDOS didn't copy its interface, and many basic concepts, from CP/M. However, this is copying ideas, not code. At the same time, this article in The Register about the same thing also specifically lists the reasons that judge cited when ruling on the case:
"Judge Zilly said Paterson falsely claimed Evans credited Kildall as the "inventor" of DOS, weakening his case. At the same time, the Judge found, Evans had faithfully recorded Paterson's denial of Kildall's view that QDOS "ripped off" CP/M."
"The Judge also agreed that Paterson copied CP/M's API, including the first 36 functions and the parameter passing mechanism, although Paterson renamed several of these. Kildall's "Read Sequential" function became "Sequential Read", for example, while "Read Random" became "Random Read"."
"Finally, Judge Zilly concluded that Evans acted without malice, and castigated the plaintiffs for introducing irrelevancies into court, including the claim that Kildall was an alcoholic."
Again, no mention of copying the implementation, just API. If you object to that kind of thing, then, oh man, you must hate Linux with a passion.