MS partner fingered in Windows code leak, Linux box implicated

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.