there is a fine line between agile and fragile
Microsoft has re-released the previously revoked Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. This time around, it's GPL licensed with source-code.
The tool has previously been released and subsequently revoked again after Microsoft was made aware that the tool, developed by a third party, included GPL licensed code in the compiled binary.
Personally I'm happy that the tool is available again, and that Microsoft "did the right thing ®" and released it with the proper license.
Yesteday I had to reinstall my home computer due to a botched BIOS flash (don't ask, long story...), and decided that it was time I installed Windows 7 on that computer as well.
Remembering the Microsoft's Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool, I went looking for the download only to be met by a 404 (page not found) error when I tried to download it. The whole information/documentation section was still available on the Microsoft Store site, but the downloadable file was missing. No information was given, so I assumed it was a glitch on Microsofts behalf and located an alternative download site (CNet) that still had it available.
The tool did it's job, and I got Windows 7 Enterprise installed from a USB pendrive without any problems at all, just as expected.
Today, however, all information regarding the tool has been removed. All you get now is a "Sorry, the page you are looking for cannot be found." 404 error when you try to access it's previous location and no explanation is given.
Turns out, Microsoft has indeed pulled the tool from the site. According to Rafael Rivera Jr. this is because he discovered that the Microsoft tool was using code from "CodePlex-hosted (yikes) GPLv2-licensed ImageMaster"
Clearly a breach of the GPL as the Microsoft tool wasn't GPL'ed itself.
Read all the details in Rafael's post "Microsoft lifts GPL code, uses in Microsoft Store tool". I guess that means we are back to using Novicorp WinToFlash again. For more details on WinToFlash, check out my post called "Installing Windows from a USB Stick".
How did this ever slip through Microsofts QA?
On November 13th Microsoft confirmed that their own internal code review of the tool had uncovered that Rafael Riviera Jr. was indeed right. The tool does contain GPL code. The tool was develped for Microsoft by a third party, but still, this could, and should, have been avoided if Microsoft had conducted a proper code review before releasing the tool into the wild.
So, Microsoft now what? Well, it seems like they indend to do the only thing they can do, release the whole tool as GPL licensed:
As a result, we will be making the source code as well as binaries for this tool available next week under the terms of the General Public License v2 as described here, and are also taking measures to apply what we have learned from this experience for future code reviews we perform.
Read the whole statement from Microsoft: Update on the Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool
I must say that even if this shouldn't have happened, Microsoft did the right thing here. Admitting what happened and took the natural consequences. Well played.
BlogBridge
Most users will probably find that the Free plan offer the feature set they want, so I don't see this as a bad move. In fact, I'm happy that this might actually turn into something profitable for the developers.
Pito
and Aleksey from the BlogBridge team sent me a very nice email a few days ago, informing me that I would be receiving a complimentary 2 year "Basic" BlogBridge Service Subscription, and I quote:
Because you have helped, supported, contributed or otherwise been a fan of BlogBridge we've set you up with a 2 year "Basic" BlogBridge Service Subscription. You will not notice a whole lot of difference to be honest, but it will let you continue to enjoy BlogBridge like you have in the past you won't be asked to pay anything.
Thank you Pito and Aleksey, all I did was to write about software I like and use on a daily basis. I certainly didn't expect to get anything in return.
In addition BlogBridge has decided to give a 3 month Free “Basic” Plan service account to everyone who has used the BlogBridge Service in the past, so no-one should be left out now that the service has changed.
A little while ago I gave up using BlogBridge, due to extreme resource utilization and general problems with it. The good developers behind the BlogBridge software responded quickly, and asked me to try out the weekly builds instead. I've been doing so for a week or so, and purposely just letting it sit in the background and not reading any of my feeds to make sure the unread count was high. Armed with the java debug console I tried reproducing the issues I was having with the 3.0.x version, and I'm very happy to report that the weekly build does not seem to suffer the same problems. I can finally go back to using BlogBridge as my primary feed reader, something I'm very happy about.
I'm also impressed by the fact that the developers behind BlogBridge actually took the time to both comment and send me emails regarding this issue, trying to figure out what was going on. Not that I actually had anything useful to report back to them, as the issue isn't present in the weekly builds. Another very nice "feature" of the weekly builds, is that you can run it without actually installing it. When you download it, it's basically just a .jar file that gets executed within your Java environment. Very nice, as this also guarantees that you get updated code from the developers each time you run it.
Once again, I'm a happy BlogBridge user! While FeedReader 3 is a nice application, the lack of centralized syncronzation services makes it very tedious to use for people who use multiple computers on a daily basis.