Microsoft is facing a bit of heat after being accused of using open source code in a way that violates the GNU's General Public License (GPL). The code being questioned was found by the Within Windows blog in Microsoft's Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. Redmond has since halted distribution of the tool, saying yesterday that it was investigating the allegations.

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Why is this a bad thing ? :D

ImageMaster
Looks like MS violated those "terms and conditions" with large modifications

The MS specific download page is now down (pulled).
Awaiting a large financial transaction to imagemaster
OK that last sentence is crap, but probably what will happen

Meh. Happens to a lot of companies, quite accidentally. Some developer decided to use some program as the basis, component or a tool and was too lazy to read the licensing terms. Show of hands - how many of us read all terms and conditions for every piece of software that we use? The issue is just less common and more visible with big corporations.

Crap, didn't even know there was something like that for Windows... anywhere its left still?

Matthew has created a new topic here: http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic138007.html

this is not the 1st time microsoft has violated the gpl.thanks to god, this got caught otherwise few years later it would have patented it.Microsoft has never innovated anything. it has not invented dos also.it has just copied everything and had patented it.we work hard and create software so that poor people have to pay only for hardware costs and not for any software.

They also copied PLURK's source code.
http://blog.plurk.com/2009/12/14/microsoft-rips-plurk/