Windows 2000 source code has been leaked

[Mike Hearn]

On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 03:02:40 +0100, Viktor Nilsson wrote:
> Well, if you read through the code, to understand it, but you not even 
> try to imitate or copy it. Just write brand new code, that does the 
> same thing but in a slightly other way?

No, that's not possible. There is apparently a ton of case law that says
you can be "tainted", even subconsciously (!) by exposure to other peoples
work. Microsoft can easily argue that if you've read the code then what
you produced, seeing as it does the same thing in probably the same way,
is automatically a derivative work.

Guys, let's not lose any valuable wine hackers over this. We all know what
the Windows code probably looks like - a lot of yucky hungarian C and C++.
If you want to get a feel for it just read the output of midl. We can do
just as good a job by not looking.