Connecticut Man Sells Micrsoft Windows Source Code
Associated Press NewsWire
A Connecticut man known on the Internet as "illwill" pleaded guilty in
Manhattan federal court on Monday to charges relating to the theft of
the source code to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating software,
considered among the company's crown jewels.
William Genovese Jr., 28, of Meriden, Conn., pleaded guilty charges
related to the unlawful sale and attempted sale of the source code for
Microsoft's Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0. The code had previously
been obtained by other people and unlawfully distributed over the
Internet, prosecutors said.
The source code is the blueprint in which software developers write
computer programs. Access to a software program's source code can
allow someone to replicate the program, and industry experts expressed
concern that hackers reviewing the Microsoft software code could
discover new ways to attack computers running some versions of
Windows.
A federal indictment filed against Genovese in February 2004, charged
that the day Microsoft learned significant portions of its source code
were stolen Genovese posted a message on his Web site offering the
code for sale.
Genovese was arrested when an investigator for an online security
company hired by Microsoft and an undercover FBI agent downloaded the
stolen source code from his Web site after sending him electronic
payments for it, Manhattan U.S. Attorney David Kelley said in a news
release.
Genovese faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000
fine when he is sentenced in the fall.
There was no published telephone listing for Genovese in Meriden,
Conn. and prosecutors did not return a call seeking information about
his attorney.
Microsoft had previously shared parts of its source code with some
companies, U.S. agencies, foreign governments and universities under
tight restrictions that prevented them from making it publicly
available.
A Microsoft spokesman said in February that the company was confident
the Windows blueprints weren't stolen from its own computer network.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company did not immediately return a message
Monday seeking comment.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.
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hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
> A Connecticut man known on the Internet as "illwill" pleaded guilty in
> Manhattan federal court on Monday to charges relating to the theft of
> the source code to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating software,
> considered among the company's crown jewels.
I believe IBM always made the source code available for its mainframe
operating systems. Competitors could and would use it for supplemental
utility programs. They would write links and exits to/from the
operating system for maximum program efficiency.
If IBM can release it, why can't Microsoft?
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess Microsoft _doesn't want_ to
release their code, and no law says they have to. But as a matter of
fact, they do release it to 'recognized developers' (not just, in
street parlance, 'hackers') to work with provided the same recognized
developers take a vow of total secrecy about their projects and
require the same vows of secrecy from their employees, etc. PAT]
Joe Morris
> I believe IBM always made the source code available for its mainframe
> operating systems. Competitors could and would use it for supplemental
> utility programs. They would write links and exits to/from the
> operating system for maximum program efficiency.
Until June 1969 (a date known in the IBM mainframe community as "New
World") IBM (with a very few exceptions) didn't even copyright its
software, and did not charge for it. The price was bundled into the
charges for IBM hardware. That's why you can find the source for
pre-New World MVS and VM on the Internet, and run them in the Hercules
S/370 emulator on a PC.
After New World, the combined pressure of the IBM mainframe clone
manufacturers and the Justice Department antitrust lawsuit gave IBM
the opening to unbundle software and begin charging what were then
extremely high prices. (On the day of the New World announcement IBM
released four "program products". A headline in a subsequent issue of
_Computerworld_ read "SURPRISE! Software costs as much as a
printer!". The reference was to one of the four program products,
Generalized Information System (GIS), which had a monthly charge
(running forever) of ~US$1200 (in 1969 dollars!), which was about the
same as the monthly rental fee for a 1403-N1 1100 lpm printer.
Don't take the above price as exact; it's been 36 years ... <grin>
However ... even after New World many of the program products still
offered an option for the customer to obtain the (copyrighted) source
code. A few years later, however, the PHB contingent at IBM decided
that it was a Bad Thing to allow mere customers to see the source
code, with the result that IBM implemented the Object Code Only (OCO)
policy.
IBM insisted that there was no need for customers to see the source or
*gasp* modify it to meet their organization's requirements because IBM
was providing defined interfaces that gave customers all they needed.
(Does this sound like the attitude of a certain software vendor in
Redmond?)
One other consequence of the OCO policy was that the customers could
no longer debug the problems that were encountered when using the IBM
products. One industry observer (Melinda Varian, I think, but I'm not
sure and I've not talked to Melinda in many years) commented that with
the OCO policy IBM had fired its most productive systems support
staff: the unpaid (by IBM) customers.
Joe Morris
Barry Margolin
wrote:
> Associated Press NewsWire wrote:
>> A Connecticut man known on the Internet as "illwill" pleaded guilty in
>> Manhattan federal court on Monday to charges relating to the theft of
>> the source code to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating software,
>> considered among the company's crown jewels.
> I believe IBM always made the source code available for its mainframe
> operating systems. Competitors could and would use it for supplemental
> utility programs. They would write links and exits to/from the
> operating system for maximum program efficiency.
When IBM did this, they were a hardware company. The OS was just
something that made their hardware useful to the customer, it wasn't
considered valuable on its own. And if third-party vendors made use
of it to make more applications and peripherals available, it meant
that IBM would sell even *more* computers. So there was little down
side to making the OS available.
But Microsoft is a software company. All they have is their software,
and if someone else starts selling it, those are sales that Microsoft
has lost.
Barry Margolin, bar...@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
Julian Thomas
03:18 PM, Joe Morris typed:
> (On the day of the New World announcement IBM
> released four "program products". A headline in a subsequent issue of
> _Computerworld_ read "SURPRISE! Software costs as much as a printer!".
> The reference was to one of the four program products, Generalized
> Information System (GIS), which had a monthly charge (running forever) of
> ~US$1200 (in 1969 dollars!), which was about the same as the monthly
> rental fee for a 1403-N1 1100 lpm printer.
And a festering piece of excrement that was. The GIS Query Editor, in
particular, was buggy with a primitive user interface to boot.
Julian Thomas: http://jt-mj.net
In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
Warpstock 2005: Hershey, Pa. October 6-9, 2005 - http://www.warpstock.org
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in
human history -- with the possible exceptions of handguns and
tequila. -- Mitch Ratliffe
Joe Morris
> In <200509011918...@massis.lcs.mit.edu>, on 09/01/05 at
> 03:18 PM, Joe Morris typed:
>> (On the day of the New World announcement IBM
>> released four "program products". A headline in a subsequent issue of
>> _Computerworld_ read "SURPRISE! Software costs as much as a printer!".
>> The reference was to one of the four program products, Generalized
>> Information System (GIS), which had a monthly charge (running forever) of
>> ~US$1200 (in 1969 dollars!), which was about the same as the monthly
>> rental fee for a 1403-N1 1100 lpm printer.
> And a festering piece of excrement that was. The GIS Query Editor, in
> particular, was buggy with a primitive user interface to boot.
That's what I remember hearing. Thankfully, the closest I ever came
to GIS was on a visit to the UKY computer center I saw the manuals
sitting on Selwyn Zerof's desk.
Joe Morris