<font size="3">MS partner fingered in Windows code leak</font>

Yesterday's Windows source code leak tracks back to long-term Microsoft partner Mainsoft, according to Betanews. An analysis of the code finds numerous references to Mainsoft's MainWin product, while a post-crash core dump file provides a possible smoking pistol pointing to a Linux machine likely to have been used by Mainsoft technology director Eyal Alaluf.

Mainsoft tells the world that "Mainsoft has unprecedented access to Microsoft Windows source code enabling the industry's highest level of Windows compliancy on Unix" - quite.

The company was one of two Unix-Windows interoperability specialists which had access to Windows source code under the WISE (Windows Interface Source Environment) programme, the other being Bristol. This three-cornered relationship and the circumstances which led Bristol to mount an antitrust suit against Microsoft are covered in possibly excessive detail here. But the rise of Linux and its growing perception by Microsoft as the threat means that almost four years on this old argument is acquiring renewed relevance.


Rest of story: The Register