Submission + - State of Microsoft source code revealed
An anonymous reader writes: From the Comes v. Microsoft case in Iowa comes an expert report filed by Andrew Schulman (author of Undocumented DOS and Undocumented Windows):
http://iowaconsumercase.org/index.html ... 2. Microsoft can't keep track of its source code for Windows.
Mr. Schulman's report, which was an exhibit to the deposition, reveals
that Microsoft is unable to keep track of the source code for Windows.
Mr. Schulman quoted from an April 2001 email written by Jim Allchin, in
which Mr. Allchin complained that some components shipped with Windows did
not check their source code into the Windows build tree:
"Windows as you know contains many pieces of functionality from different
groups around the company. Regardless of product, good engineering
practice would require us to be able to do a fresh build of a product at
any time using the same tools. Unfortunately, we cannot do this with
Windows today. . . . We need all the source code for Windows being built
out of one place with one consistent set of tools. It is actually amazing
how we have not done this for so long. . . We need to be able to build
what we ship long after we RTM. . . . There are legal obligations
regarding our ability here. . . . There are 27 components . . . that are
still dropping binaries [on Whistler]. . . ."
As Ms. Conlin observed in a November 11, 2006 hearing: "Microsoft has made
statements, public statements, reported statements that governments and
third-party security auditors have conducted thorough and exhaustive
reviews of its Windows source code. That, of course, can't be true if, in
fact, they don't seem to have all of their Windows source code."
(11-09-2006, Tr at 54:11-54:17). During that hearing, counsel for
Microsoft confirm that Microsoft still is unable to keep track of its
Windows source code.
Mr. Schulman's report is posted online at
http://iowaconsumercase.org/assets/attachments/Sup p_Rpt_Andrew_Schulman.pdf
