Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by fiblye 2550 days ago
If Microsoft cared, they wouldn’t be hosting that on their very own servers.

GitHub belongs to Microsoft. They could pull that down at any time just because they feel like it. But they haven’t. That’s a pretty solid sign that there’s not any legal consequence to viewing it.
2 comments
squarefoot 2550 days ago
Well, my paranoid 99% says that they could keep it online on purpose so that all people viewing it fall in a legal disadvantage position. Removing that code would achieve nothing in secrecy today compared to the legal leverage they can get tomorrow by keeping it online.
link
rossy 2549 days ago
For what it's worth, it's not just Microsoft who care. You're not allowed[1] to contribute to Wine if you've ever seen the leaked Windows source code. I think it's weird that they consider your mind to be "tainted" forever, but whatever. I guess they want to be cautious.

(You're also not allowed to contribute to the Wine CRT if you've ever seen the CRT source that's legally distributed with the Windows SDK.)

[1]: https://wiki.winehq.org/Developer_FAQ#Who_can.27t_contribute...

link