Microsoft delays open-sourcing of Windows 7 tool

Microsoft has delayed re-releasing a Windows 7 installation tool that it has admitted included open-source code, saying that it's still testing the revamped utility.

The company now plans to issue a new version of Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (WUDT) in the "next few weeks," said Peter Galli, Microsoft's open-source community manager in a post to the firm's Port25 blog last Friday.

Two weeks ago, Microsoft yanked WUDT from its Web site after blogger Rafael Rivera accused the company of lifting code from the GPLv2-licensed "Imagemaster" open-source project. Rivera, who writes the Within Windows blog, said Microsoft compounded the problem by not acknowledging the source of the code embedded in WDUT, and by not sharing the source code for its modifications, or the tool itself, to the project, as required by the terms of GPL (GNU General Public License).

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