Robert Lunnon wrote:
The mere "claim" of an infringement by Microsoft's army of lawyers can make major corporations quiver in their boots.
That's true. Although, the fact that we have a source control system that allows us to account for where every piece of code comes from should allow us to identify an unscrupulous individual submitting copyrighted code, which is more than a lot of corporations have.
I feel it's quite possible that the leak is a deliberate ploy by Microsoft to be able to "claim" that projects like wine are tainted, infringe Microsoft copyright and should be shutdown/ made illegal. This tactic would at least slow down competitive development in the marketplace.... Hmm
Oh, come on! There is no good reason why Microsoft would release the code and plenty of bad reasons. The only open-source projects that could possibly be compatible with Windows source code are Wine, WineX and ReactOS. Since a lot functions have already been implemented to some extent it would probably be easier to work from Wine code than to adapt Windows code. Not to mention technical issues like half of Windows being C++ and code being dumped in using unimplemented functions. And even if it were found out that someone had been looking at the Windows code whilst at the same time submitting patches for Wine it would be very likely that their code would be removed within hours of it being discovered.
Mind you if the leak can be proved deliberate, then a deliberate release of such code might render the copyrights ineffective, since Microsoft was knowingly giving the code out for distribution....
Hell freezing over seems more likely.
Still, Watch This Space !
Bob
Rob