32TB of Windows 10 beta builds, driver source code leaked

Seeing “Windows 10 source code leaked!” headlines or tweets? Not so fast – while there was a leak, it wasn’t anything particularly interesting. The only truly interesting bit is this, as explained by Ars’ Peter Bright:

The leak is also described as containing a source code package named the “Shared Source Kit.” This is a package of source code for things like the USB, storage, and Wi-Fi stacks, and the Plug-and-Play system. It isn’t the core operating system code (part of which leaked in 2004) but rather contains those parts of the driver stack that third parties have to interact most intimately with.

Microsoft routinely gives access to the source code of a wide variety of parts of Windows to academic institutions, certain enterprise customers, and, of course, hardware makers – which is what the above mentioned source code package refers to. While interesting, it seems unlikely this leak is of any significance to anyone.

4 Comments

  1. 2017-06-25 9:10 pm
  2. 2017-06-26 4:25 am
    • 2017-06-26 9:09 am