All Things Microsoft > Microsoft as a Company

Microsoft uses secretly embedded code..

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Calum:

quote:The supreme irony is that American tech executives and government policy makers have squared off over a number of tech policy issues, such as exports of encryption technology and supercomputers.
--- End quote ---
That's not irony!!!! it's not even really relevant!

in fact:    
quote:i

fuckoffmicrosoft:
Eighteen months ago, Microsoft opened up its source code to large organisations. After years of pressure from the open-source movement, it gave 2,300 companies the chance to see the innermost secrets of the Windows operating system.

http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t479-s2122570,00.html

voidmain:
Do you think they let them see *all* of the code?  I seriously doubt it.  And I would hardly call it opening the source because of the massive restrictions and having to sign their lives away before they can actually *see* any of the code.  Very few companies actually took M$ up on this offer because of the restrictions. And do you think that the ~200 companies that actually took Microsoft up on their offer can do anything with the code, like compile it and create their *own* Windows? Not quite.  

What this means is, they still have to get Windows in binary form from Microsoft, which of course means any holes/backdoors could be placed in Windows by Microsoft. There is no way to tell for sure that your copy of Windows does not have built-in backdoors unless you have compiled the entire OS yourself from source. And even then you can't be sure unless you actually are the one who wrote the compiler from scratch used to compile that code. And even still you must have compiled that compiler using a compiler known not to have it's own back door generating code which is pretty tough to do actually:

http://www.cs.umsl.edu/~sanjiv/sys_sec/security/back_door.html
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2002/01374995.html

[ September 25, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

Calum:
well it sounds like the Microsoft 'open source' nondisclosure licence is a undred times stricter (and more ludicrous) than the ones from AT&T that prompted RMS to set up the free software foundation.

It sounds like Microsoft only did this to say that they do allow people to view their code, if it comes up in a court of law.

voidmain:
That's part of the reason. The other part is that since very few companies took them up on their offer they can say "see, no one really wants to see the source code, OSS is a farce". I certainly wouldn't want to see M$ code, however, I also wouldn't really consider it OSS.

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