Does Anyone Believe Microsoft Is Not the Source of the Win 7 Leaks?

Surely, in this age of increased security concerns, a company the size of Microsoft would make every effort to keep things that are to be private that way. With that in mind, and the number of different builds of the current development product that have seen the light of day, is there any doubt left that Microsoft is allowing this?

Each time a new build ‘escapes’, the dutiful press obligingly give notice that the best thing to do is pass on any of these packages, citing the possibility of implanted nastiness, post Microsoft. At the same time, we have the bigger magazines, ZDNet primarily, egging the prospective user on, by speaking of the changes seen, and posting galleries of pictures.

This is similar to putting the juicy steak out for the hungry dogs, after all they’ve had is cereal for a long, long time (Vista).

A story in IT Wire concerns itself with the very latest of the leaks -

Microsoft is doing a real bad job of keeping the lid on Windows 7 builds, as the availability of the latest RC1 Build 7057 software via BitTorrent demonstrates.

Details of Windows 7 have been leaking like crazy for six months or more. We now know there will be no less than six versions to choose from come release and that there are currently around 2000 bugs in the code.

We also know that it has taken at least 1000 developers to get this far, it only takes one rogue developer to leak a build.

The very latest being Windows 7 Build 7057 Release Candidate 1 which has followed the previous Build 7048 into the wild in double quick time.

This latest build is now available to anyone with a BitTorrent client, having been compiled on March 5th 2009 according to the build string it shows.

It’s not all good news for those who don;t care about the legality of their operating software, as only the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Build 7057 seems to have hit the torrent trackers right now.

There is some good news though, it would appear that this RC1 version will run until March 2010 according to the all new login screen.

Which all sounds good, but you could just wait until April 9th when Microsoft is expected to make the real thing, the final thing, available to the masses.

But, for those interested in such things, what is new in Build 7057? Well there are those promised changes to the User Account Control settings which followed disclosure of two vulnerabilities related to a change in default UAC behaviour.

Otherwise it seems to be all cosmetic: new login screen, new user account imagery, new wallpaper.

At this point, only the most naive would believe that these leaked revisions are not part of a carefully controlled PR effort from Microsoft. There are ways for this established company to act differently than before, all things coming from Redmond aren’t  necessarily FUD.

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