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Windows XP source code has leaked

gizmodo.com.au

61–70 of 485 posts

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgia is, it seems, a hell of a drug.

In early Windows XP days everybody said it was crap compared to Win2k. XP was the first one with product activation as well. And people called the Luna theme childish. Then Vista came along and people said XP was the good one.

Then Windows 7 came along and nobody said Vista was the good one.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#62
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> proprietary operating systems to be actively working against you Where is this happening ? Are we expecting this now ? What did I miss

yes. most of the things I see about windows vs linux involve "well you can just turn all the spyware stuff off, all you have to do is dive into these 10 menus and flip these switches" "Its easy to disable the ads in the start menu" etc etc. Even if you can turn the stuff off, the fact that you have to feels a lot like the OS working against the user.

And the next update may reset some of them.

The Edge update comes to mind that had reset the browser preference presumably to be able to push edge again.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#63

> Would you believe more than 1% of computers worldwide are still using Windows XP? Probably higher -- XP is still popular in China and supported by third party companies there.

statcounter reports it to be 3.11% in the period Aug 2019 - Aug 2020

https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#65
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In early Windows XP days everybody said it was crap compared to Win2k. XP was the first one with product activation as well. And people called the Luna theme childish. Then Vista came along and people said XP was the good one.

Then Windows 7 came along and nobody said Vista was the good one.

i think the consensus is that windows 95, XP, 7 were the least troublesome versions. I still think 7 > 10

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#66

I'm actually not familiar with the legality of downloading this torrent. Is this considered legal, or is it like stolen goods, where the mere possession is a crime, even lacking evidence of the actual theft? Also, what would be the legality a group of people "maintaining" this code? (developing security patches, etc)

Another interesting question to ask may be: Would downloading/seeding this torrent be considered a worse offence than if it were, say, a movie?

I can't see why Microsoft would bother pursuing people for downloading or seeding this. The cat is out of the bag. And people will use this in ways MS don't want regardless of what they do. It is not like a movie where there is a loss of hypothetical revenue. Source code is not exactly an easy was to install a pirated OS!

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#67
post #25

Creator of the torrent posted on reddit about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/windowsxp/comments/iz46du/the_windo...

>And also, Microsoft claims to love open source so then I guess they'll love how open this source code is now that it's passed around on BitTorrent.

One can love open-source and still be against license violations. What a warped world view.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#68
post #33

> Would you believe more than 1% of computers worldwide are still using Windows XP? Probably higher -- XP is still popular in China and supported by third party companies there.

Are these airgapped machines or machines with networking? Internet connection?

Can't speak for Chinese systems, but I'm aware of "jump hosts" (used for remote access to industrial control systems) that are running windows server 2003 and are internet-exposed.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#69
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then Windows 7 came along and nobody said Vista was the good one.

i think the consensus is that windows 95, XP, 7 were the least troublesome versions. I still think 7 > 10

10 has tons of under-the-hood improvements that are great, honestly.

However, it also has a ton of advertisments everywhere, and those annoying auto-installing apps.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#70

My immediate thought is whether researchers or investigative journalists will find cold hard US government backdoors. This is potentially big.

If it really does exist, the backdoor can simply be inserted during the last-minute compile before release. It would be invisible in the code repository, the vast majority of internal developers at Microsoft won't even see anything unusual. Also, I heard anecdotes that Microsoft already allowed governments to audit the source code of Windows under NDA on multiple occasions in the past.

But if you cannot guarantee the correspondence between source and binary releases, such a review only helps a little. Reproducible build is crucial for auditability.

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