Windows 7 tool gets GPL v2 makeover

Open source violation was just a bad dream

Microsoft reposted its Windows 7 download tool online yesterday, after yanking it off the internet last month when it coughed to violating a series of GNU General Public Licence (GPL) terms.

In November Microsoft called the violation a mistake, and while the code had been supplied by a third party, it took responsibility for not having caught the infringement during its own code review process. Since then, it's been making changes to the tool.

And, as of yesterday, the tweaked version has been made available under the GPL v2.

Microsoft's open source community liaison officer manager Peter Galli made the announcement to TechNet subscribers on Wednesday.

"The testing and localisation took longer than we expected, but the project is now hosted on CodePlex.com, Microsoft's Open Source software project hosting repository," he said.

Galli added that the altered version of the Windows 7 download tool meant that getting the firm's latest operating system onto a netbook would be slightly more cumbersome.

The "install involves additional steps," said Galli. Microsoft had previously knitted together various executable files into the tool. ®