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Microsoft Acknowledges Theft of Code From Plurk
adeelarshad82 writes with news that Microsoft has acknowledged and taken responsibility for the theft of code belonging to Plurk.com, although the company also said it was the work of a Chinese vendor. Yesterday we discussed Plurk's blog post accusing Microsoft of copying their UI and code for Microsoft's Chinese microblogging site, Juku. Microsoft has now taken the site down and indefinitely suspended Juku's beta.
"When I was a child there were penalties for breaking rules. Come to think of it, there still are, unless you're a giant corporation it seems."
They've admitted that the code was copied and took down the site. What rule didn't they follow?
I think it's a good thing actually. Because it's revealing the problems of subcontracting. What Microsoft is seeing already has happened elsewhere. Just the victim is either too small, or the companies involved are smaller, so that news of stuff like this is lucky to make the news. Only big companies get the attention of the press.
Code gets "reused" all the time, accidentally or maliciously. Just the parties are often too small or settle quickly to be more than a ripple. In fact, I'd guess Microsoft and other companies are looking at the three major code "reuse" issues in recent history - Microsoft and the USB/DVD Downloader Tool, this thing, and the BusyBox thing, to carefully audit their subcontracted code.
If you RTFA, the decision to copy the code was not made by MS itself, but by an independent Chinese contractor that was hired to do the job. I assume that said contractor will now be heavily fined for breaking the contract terms (TFA: "This was in clear violation of the vendor's contract with the MSN China joint venture").
Furthermore, "Microsoft and our MSN China joint venture will be taking a look at our practices around applications code provided by third-party vendors".