How would the tech world change if someone stole and posted Windows source code online for all to see?

How would the tech world change if someone stole and posted Windows source code online for all to see?

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Are we really having this thread AGAIN?
Nothing would change; it would take decades to suss out the layers upon layers of backdoors and other issues with code. WINE/ReactOS would probably get slightly better, but noot by much, since using the leaked code would be illegal.

Any open source software that used the code in any way to improve their own would be ripe for a lawsuit because Windows is proprietary software. You can't just use leaked source code like that. Anyone that has even so much as looked at the code, and tries to contribute could get the project sued. The WINE developers would probably be more pissed/scared shitless than happy about it, their job vetting source code gets much harder because it is illegal to use proprietary code to enhance your own.

See for why this is completely wrong

Good point, but also moot.
Here are some questions.

pirated copies would appear on public trackers everywhere claiming to be "TinyWin10" with no backdoors

people might make better tools to disable tracking on legal copies without using any of the leaked source and that would be neat i guess

but windows would still suck


won't fly in a courtroom

but it is logically sound

theoretically, but not in reality. monkeys on typewriters writing forever would eventually write the source code to windows, but in reality there's no way in hell you would write the exact same code in the exact same way without having looked at their code.

I meant they'd base their code off it, as I understand, the issues holding back ReactOS and WINE are that they don't really know how Wangblows works, once that is released, and detailed knowledge becomes public, the projects would be picked up again very strongly by the community and will become much better

It is absolutely not moot. If source code leaks, and suddenly a piece of software improves exponentially it won't be hard at all for Microsoft to make the case that code was potentially stolen, or used to help development of that software. It's your word vs a company with billions of dollars to spend on suing you that just had their valuable IP leaked. And if they manage to prove the person that contributed the code looked at the leaked source you are completely screwed.

Even if Microsoft didn't manage to win the lawsuit they can still drag it out and drain you of a lot of money that could have been used on development instead. It would be in the best interest of projects to stay far away from any leaked code, or anyone that could potentially have looked at the leaked code.

It is 100% legal to reverse engineer source code, and figure it out yourself. It is illegal to look at proprietary source code and base your improvements off of it no matter how much you try to obfuscate the fact that you did it. It's why driver makers don't look at leaked source code, and don't allow contributions from people that could have looked at leaked source code. There have been source code leaks before, and in general it hurts development because you have to be more strict about who can contribute.

you might be right there, but i've heard that even looking at the source code is illegal. so knowing how it works might help the project, but using and spreading that knowledge you gained illegally is not. the people behind projects like WINE would probably be sued immediately because now microsoft has reason to believe that they looked at the source code.

really, nothing legal could be done with the source code.

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It has happened multiple times, newfags.

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Not in its entirety or on a meaningful version. Win2000 is irrelevant

There was the Win2k research kernel, and a complete windows NT leak (I believe)

I don't see how the NT leak isn't meaningful..

you mean how would it change if it happened again?

How would decade old code be useful relative to modern systems? It's changed so much since then I'm sure anything you could find in it has been changed

If Windows' source was leaked, and someone did anything even remotely useful with it, they would be sued into oblivion.


The NT4 leak was fairly complete. Someone's even managed to build it.


NT4 was less than 8 years old at the time of the leak. That's about as old as Server 2008 R1 is today.

As much as I hate these threads, they do make me wonder how long it's going to be until MS has their own little "Snowden" that leaks all their spyware source/backend spyware support infrastructure.

I would cum freedoms.
After then, I would laugh at all the retardation and bad code in it.
Then I'd format my designated Windows PC and inject it with freedom OS.
I would laugh as Apple achieves perfect Windows compatibility via Rosetta Win32 (basically WINE but with Apple shininess).
Then I would wait for someone to do the same for OSX.

microsoft would sue everybody while shilling harder for tpp and some russian faggot would throw up a torrent of win10: black edition.

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This actually happened before with an older version of Windows. For the most part, nothing happened because you can't legally incorporate stolen proprietary code into a free software project. All that happened was ReactOS studied the fuck out of it and is still trying to figure out ways to sneakily re-write it differently enough that M$ can't prove anything, and the freetard community freaked the fuck out because omg reactos is stealing proprietary code !!!

Like the Free Software community ever gave a shit about ReactOS in the first place.

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In the real world however, it would be spread like wildfire, and Microsoft wouldn't be able to do shit.

The source would spread, but nobody would do anything with it, just like last time.

Nobody's going to bother working on something that's going to get DMCA takedowns and C&Ds the second it goes public.

see
illegal copies would be made but it would be useless for projects that need to be distributed legally. so you'd get tiny win10 and other shit like that but nothing that matters

But we're not lawyers. Point is, it's not worth the risk. Violating a proprietary license is just as bad as violating the GPL (which HAS been held up in court)