Comment by unstatusthequo
7 years ago
Don't we all think if the accusations were true, Microsoft would have aggressively persued legal action? Remember that guy they sued into oblivion and maybe prison over "rescue discs" for old PCs? Microsoft it notoriously sue happy. Why not here?
Because reactos is irrelevant to Microsoft?
The project has been around for 20 years, it's not likely to cause MSFT to lose any revenue any time soon, and there is no large corporation to extract money from in a lawsuit.
It's basically the same reason they don't go after people who have a pirated version of Windows and just show them a "this is fake" warning.
Also, attempting to take it down would surely cause reputation damage to Microsoft. The "old" Microsoft is somewhat infamous. Going after the small guy would not help their image.
I hate to say this: the guy who printed the "rescue disks" also decided to put the standard Windows Install Disk graphics on them. He got sued over the whole thing, but they look the same, and he didn't pay is what got him.
Because Nadella is trying hard to win the hearts of developers and attacking an open source project now like they did with Linux would backfire on them.
Because what Microsoft did instead was offer Alex Ionescu a job.