Microsoft has a formidable legal machine that would surely go after misuse of the code from a leak like this. The thing is, it has now been more than six years since Microsoft dropped support for XP, does it really matter if the source code is made public? The Poison PillĪs Erin Pinheiro pointed out in her excellent article on the Nintendo IP leak earlier this year (perhaps the best Joe Kim artwork of the year on that one, by the way), legitimate developers can’t really make use of leaked code since it opens them up to potential litigation. The Verge says they have “verified the material as legitimate” and that the leak also includes Windows Server 2003 and some DOS and CE code as well. News comes overnight that the Windows XP source code has been leaked.
