In a strange bit of ...
The Microsoft Response To The Plurk Debacle – Sorry!
When the story broke, few could believe: Microsoft stealing from a startup? Then it became apparent that a third party vendor was probably to blame.
Microsoft has just released the following statement that sets the whole thing to rest. Take a look:
On Monday, December 14, questions arose over a beta application called Juku developed by a Chinese vendor for our MSN China joint venture. We immediately worked with our MSN China joint venture to investigate the situation.
The vendor has now acknowledged that a portion of the code they provided was indeed copied. This was in clear violation of the vendor’s contract with the MSN China joint venture, and equally inconsistent with Microsoft’s policies respecting intellectual property.
When we hire an outside company to do development work, our practice is to include strong language in our contract that clearly states the company must provide work that does not infringe the intellectual property rights of others. We are a company that respects intellectual property and it was never our intent to have a site that was not respectful of the work that others in the industry have done.
We will be suspending access to the Juku beta indefinitely.
We are obviously very disappointed, but we assume responsibility for this situation. We apologize to Plurk and we will be reaching out to them directly to explain what happened and the steps we have taken to resolve the situation.
In the wake of this incident, Microsoft and our MSN China joint venture will be taking a look at our practices around applications code provided by third-party vendors.
In a recent comment discussion a Microsoft employee, I asked for just that: our vendor blew it, we do take the blame, and are quite sorry. Points for being classy Microsoft.
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The Next Web Podcast: Episode 3 – Conspiracy Theories
[...] Of FarmVille Australian Internet Censorship Given the Go Ahead – But What’s the Alternative? The Microsoft Response To The Plurk Debacle – Sorry! Is There No Google Phone? Also, read the scary quote about Google and don’t send Ralf any [...]
This kind of thing is common place in china, Copyrights are often not enforced and many large companies are ripped off with fake electronic, medication and all kinds of other patented and copyrighted material so it doesn’t surprise me that that trend has found its way into software.
Some people at MSN China should get whacked, too — did none of them see Juku and recognize it as a clone of Plurk and wonder “gee, did our vendor just steal their code …” and do some due-diligence?
This basically says that management at MSN China is so out of touch with current trends that they didn’t recognize Juku as Plurk. Because, the only other explanation is that they DID recognize it and green-lighted it anyway, which is blatant IP violation by Microsoft.