Windows 2000 & Windows NT 4 Source Code Leaks

Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 13 2004 @ 12:21 AM CST

There\'s only one package, which contains part of the source of win2k (which is just an updated version of NT 4). It\'s about the size of what would fit on a CD, and it doesn\'t have some core stuff that the full source would contain. A lot of networking and filesystem code is missing. The core kernel code is there along with most of the runtime stuff and the desktop environment applications.

It\'s appears likely that:

a) It\'s possibly derived from some sort of source package that Microsoft makes available to licensees or academic institutions, with much of the more sensitive \'proprietary technology\' omitted.

b) It may have been stolen from a machine infected by the Nimda virus, or at some point was hosted on a machine infected by Nimda.

c) The corporation Mainsoft (http://www.mainsoft.com) appears to have something to do with this. They may be who leaked it.

The source code making the rounds is interesting to look at if you into that kind of geeky stuff, but otherwise relatively uninteresting and ultimately inconsequential.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 13 2004 @ 12:21 PM CST

Hehe :-)

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96614&threshold=0&commentsort=0&tid=109&mode=thread&cid=8265128

Let\'s put it this way.

Microsoft has the capability to take advantage of many open source software projects in the world to include with Windows. They can essentially reverse engineer anything to be compatible with any platform in the world.

Linux will always be at a disadvantage when they have this closed advantage. With this leak, it helps level the playing field. If the WinNT kernel code is examined more, and it\'s internal operations better understood, that could lead to binary compatibility with Windows for Linux.

As long as the people examining the Windows code are NOT the same people writing the implementation for binary compatibility. (at least in the US)

This could be the nail in the coffin for Microsoft. :-)

Today\'s empires, Tomorrow\'s ashes.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 13 2004 @ 07:23 PM CST

The really interesting parts (to OSS/free software people) of the Windows source are not in this leak. The NTFS driver (which would be immensely useful) along with the SMB/CIFS networking layer are both missing.

Pretty much all of the technology implemented in this leak has already been done better by other people in OSS code. This speaks volumes about the quality of Linux, et al and the lack thereof in MS software.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 14 2004 @ 01:32 PM CST

Microsoft is way too powerful to use a suicide tactic like this. Plus, 2003 is based on 2000, so there\'s too many secrets involved in 2000 to release just to get people to upgrade.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 13 2004 @ 09:30 PM CST

Yeah, but the OSS people are vowing not to look at this stuff, for fear of giving the Beast of Redmond a way of shutting down every open source project. As it is, the Samba team may come under assault regardless of whether they look at the code or not. Thanks to the way intellectual property is defined and handled in legal circles, it\'s entirely possible Microsoft will soon start seeking opportunities to shut down potentially competing project.

The funny thing is, the GPL and BSD licences rely on US copyright law to have any legal force, yet they both (the former much more than the latter) strive to promote improvement and sharing of code, with one goal being the creation of entire free, available codebases to use and improve upon. Although many of the right-libertarian programmers try to link open source with capitalism, the concept of spreading code and keeping it available for all is closer to socialist concepts of individuals providing to and benefitting from a collective body of work, than to a capitalist concept of exclusive, closed \"intellectual property\" used to compete with, and triumph over, other property owners.[0]

[0] Not to say there\'s no competition in free software, just that the competitors aim for higher-quality software, instead of higher profits, which does not necessarily lead to better software (and in the case of Microsoft, seems to demonstrate otherwise)

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 14 2004 @ 03:25 AM CST

Steve Ballmers SCO type strategy could be to actually \' leak\' some code then sue the bejasus out of every Lindows type OS going. You win some cases, not on the merits or something risible like \' justice\', by out spending and out lasting the opposition - classic war by attrition. It\'s exactly what I would do and the beast\'s of Redmond have previous form in this area.Calls for a Slayer I reckon.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 14 2004 @ 03:31 AM CST

I hate to sound like a crashing bore on this but if MS source code is in the clear would some Tovarich please post some Hanssen* files online?

We could sure use blueprints and battle order of the Pentagons death stars.

CNN.com In-Depth Specials
... Since 1985, FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen was a mole inside the FBI, accused of
spying for the former Soviet Union and then for Russia in exchange for cash ...
www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/hanssen/ - 22k - Cached - Similar pages

Robert Philip Hanssen: The Spy Who Stayed Out In the Cold
... ROBERT PHILIP HANSSEN: THE SPY WHO STAYED OUT IN THE COLD. By Adrian Havill. ... 6.
Inside Robert Hanssen\'s Weird World. 7. On the Road to Oblivion. 8. Epilogue. ...
Description: Crime Library profile of the FBI agent caught selling secret government documents to the KGB.
Category: Society > Government > ... > Spies > Hanssen, Robert Philip
www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/ spies/hanssen/

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 14 2004 @ 08:10 AM CST

The basic problem here is that Microsoft tries to claim its source code as a trade secret (so they can nail you if you release it, but which is wasted once in the open) as copyright (which goes on indefinitely but only covers creative elements) and not as a patent (which covers technology, but requires disclosure and expires after a certain interval).

Legally speaking, source code should have come under patent law all along.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 14 2004 @ 12:03 PM CST

The conspiracy theory I heard was that this code was released on purpose, by someone in Microsoft, to scare businesses using Windows 2000 to upgrade to Windows 2003 (sales of Win2k3 are slow, and most business users are not planning to upgrade any time soon -- or so the theory goes).

Any lawsuits to crush free software projects are likely to be thrown out due to lack of evidence -- making them at best a bonus to further forestall the switch to free software (more Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, standard MSBS).

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