December 15, 2009

A popular Asian microblogging site has accused Microsoft of ripping off its code and interface design to build a new MSN social-networking site in China.

Microsoft tells The Reg it's investigating the matter. According to reports, the software giant is suspending access to the MSN site, but it appears it is still online.

"Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but blatant theft of code, design, and UI elements is just not cool, especially when the infringing party is the biggest software company in the world. Yes, we’re talking about Microsoft," reads a blog post from Canada-based startup Plurk, which claims a membership in the "mid seven figures" concentrated primarily in Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. According to a company spokesman, it also has members in the UK, US, Australia, and Canada.

The post claims that Microsoft's new Chinese microblogging service, MSN Juku/Hompy/Mclub, is "by and large an EXACT copy of Plurk’s" system and that 80 per cent of its code "appears to be stolen directly from Plurk." To support the claim, the company posts screenshots of the two services:

But Plurk says the similarities extend well beyond the visual. The company claims that Microsoft has taken Plurk’s custom developed libraries, css files, and client code and shamelessly ported them to its own service. "Speaking technically, what makes our claim a little stronger is that Plurk's client side code was obfuscated to begin with, so someone went in there and had to spend some real effort to unpack/reengineer the JS code and prettify it on their end," a Plunk spokesman told The Reg. "All internal vars have shortnames like B, C, D, etc. Everything that interacts with the outside has long names, as in the minified Plurk code...

"We would not be going out with this story if we weren't fully confident in our allegations of willful intent on their part in taking our code."

When we asked Microsoft's stateside operation about Plurk's allegations, the company said it's looking into the matter. "Microsoft takes intellectual property seriously, and we are currently investigating these allegations," Redmond general manager of corporate communications Mark Murray told us. "It may take some time due to the time zone differences with Beijing."

Source:-http://www.theregister.co.uk