The website is down, but yeah, offering customised ISO files with Windows and some tools is clearly a breach of license. You can't just take a paid OS distribution, add some config and plonk it onto github.
There's been people patching and customising Windows for many years, but most of the time that was done in the form of gaining an official ISO, patching it with a program on your computer and then using that to install. With that model the user is the one violating the license, not the distributor, though often these configurations used the official Windows API for OEMs so it was legally grey enough that I've never heard of any lawsuits.
If these people just provided an exe and some patch files to turn an official ISO into the same thing as they offered on their website, they'd likely be in the clear.
I'm not entirely sure what the point of the project is though, loads of pentesting tools only run well on Linux and there's plenty of Linux pentesting kits already. Why not just run Kali in a fullscreen virtualbox and be done with it? Or load Kali into WSL2, assuming Microsoft has fixed the hardware access limitations in WSL1?
But that is not what the DMCA copyright claim says. It does not complain about redistributing the files of a paid OS. The complaint is explicitly about providing a tool to work around technical restrictions, so "just provided an exe and some patch files" will not make microsoft happy.
A common copyright claim of someone sharing copies of proprietary files would not make news. Using the DRM circumvention provision in DMCA is a bit more rare.
My guess is that the technical restrictions being alluded to is the advertisement and telemetry that is baked in.
There are comments here that speculate about the issue being the creation of a derivative work. If the claim had said so it too would be interesting as the line between operative system and user space is always a bit blurry and people been arguing what is what for decades.
The way I read the complaint[1] there are two separate claims made. The first, distributing the modified ISO, appears to be the core DMCA claim:
> BSA has determined that GitHub.com (specifically, content made available on GitHub through the link listed below) is providing access to copyrighted, nonpublic, proprietary information of our member Microsoft. The link leads to copyrighted material pertaining to Microsoft. Specifically, the copyrighted material in question can be found at the following link:
The second claim, concerning technical restrictions, is advanced as an EULA violation:
> Moreover[2], the link provides a work around technical restrictions of the software, which violates Microsoft’s Software License Terms. Please see lines 22 to 30 from the following link: https://github.com/ninjutsu-project/ninjutsu-project.github....
I'm sure MS and the BSA would love to have any EULA violation classified as a DMCA violation, but I don't know if this second claim would hold up. I'm not an IP (or any sort of) lawyer, and my ability to parse legalese is limited, but I think MS/BSA have a much weaker case for this if the complaint did not have claim 1. That is, distributing the tools may "not make microsoft happy", but their legal foundation to take those down is much shakier.
I can see how seeing it as two claims is a valid interpretation.
If we look at claim 2, the term "technical restrictions" is often used as a synonym to DRM in many places. The law text use different words: "(A) to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner".
Without invoking the circumvent clause, claim 2 looks misplaced in a DMCA notice. What aspect of copyright law is being invoked? The only thing left would have to be derivative work. The case law for that is spotty, through blizzard did win one such case if I remember right where a cheating tool enabled players to break the EULA. Blizzard argued that the tool assisted players in creating an illegal derivative work of the wow client, as the tool modified the client in an unlawful way against the conditions in the EULA, and thus the developers of the cheating tool could be held responsible for the creation. BSA could make a similar argument but I don't think they are based on how claim 2 was written.
If we see the DMCA notice as two distinct claims, and we remove claim 2 as being irrelevant in the context of copyright, then what is left is the BSA claim that the repository had copyrighted material and the accused that said they don't. Looking at the linked video myself, it seems that they did copy the installer iso from microsoft. Based on those observations I suspect that Ninjutsu os is simply an unmodified installer bundled with post-install scripts. That might be a copyright infringement, and if so, removing the unmodified installer and make the user download it themselves might resolve the issue. That is, as long as claim 2 is ignored.
As a side note, I would find it somewhat funny if microsoft later claimed that pre- and post install scripts create a derivative work. It has some interesting implication for configuration management utilities and cloud solutions.
This is a bad move for MS. It's user hostile enough to have telemetry and ads in the OS in the first place. If they fight against people's efforts to make it usable again, they lose market share, developers/power users lose interest in the platform, less software gets bought from and made for their store, and so on. I think what they really need is a pro version of Windows that attracts pro users by removing the bullshit to start with. That shouldn't be exclusive to Enterprise.
The opt-out does not exist for Home and Pro users. Only Windows 10 Enterprise can completely disable the telemetry engine. Unless you take extra steps (firewall rules, network-level blocking, etc.) Microsoft will get a ping every time a new device is plugged in and there's no way to disable that for the common user.
I used to accept most telemetry popups from Microsoft before they became opt-out, but in the scheme MS has currently set up, I don't think MS let their customers make an informed choice about their data collection. For that reason, I oppose it as much as I can.
> I don't think MS let their customers make an informed choice about their data collection.
I think this is part of a larger problem where no single individual can given informed consent to any corporate contract because one involves a team of lawyers and the other involves an average person. Even if the single individual was a lawyer it would be questionable, but for the average person who has a limited college education and no special legal education at all, there is far too great a power difference for informed consent to be given.
I don't know, but I assume the telemetry is used for marketing by Microsoft at least and probably by their partners (ie people who financially benefit Microsoft partially in return for access to "telemetry").
Every Linux distro manages this. You have the client machine determine which updates it needs, as it has access both to its own state, and to the package repository's manifest.
What exactly is the basis for this DMCA claim? Is there any precedent for this or does MS just think their PR has it too easy?
DRM is supposed to prevent redistribution of copyrighted works. That's the unethical part. If the user is not redistributing copyrighted works, why should the law care about the preservation of DRM?
If I buy a locked safe at an auction and it contains a bunch of copyrighted paintings, nobody would get mad at me for breaking the lock so I could get to them. What else am I going to do? Hang the safe on my wall? The problem only arises if I start copying the paintings and distributing them.
> If I buy a locked safe at an auction and it contains a bunch of copyrighted paintings, nobody would get mad at me for breaking the lock so I could get to them. What else am I going to do? Hang the safe on my wall? The problem only arises if I start copying the paintings and distributing them.
This is why DMCA 1201 is such a worthless weasel and needs to be destroyed.
If you're circumventing in order to commit copyright infringement, that's already illegal and you don't need a separate rule for it. If you're circumventing in order to do something that isn't copyright infringement, why should that be illegal?
No, it's probably shit like Driver Signature Enforcement. I've been doing everything I can in order to keep my Vaio Z-Series able to avail itself of new drivers from Nvidia, but since Sony abandoned maintenance, and no one else will, the community of users that like the platform have gone through gargantuan efforts to try to get drivers working for it.
Which Windows 7 now refuses to load, because they aren't blessed by Microsoft, who've officially discontinued support.
Microsoft can go to hell in that regard. I didn't ask for them to backport their driver nanny onto my machine at the behest of the media industry. They broke my machine, not the other way around.
I expect to be able to compute. Not be patted on the head and fed platitudes that "Oh, we can't let you do that. We have agreements to abide by which you were never considered to be a party to, yet nevertheless, will be subject to."
If I have to learn to handcode UEFI assembly to un-f my machine, so be it. I could probably load Linux on it, or uninstall that update in particular, but to be frank, at this point, my quest to lobotomize Windows has become a project continued out of spite. I will not accept this kind of velvet gloved, law by corporate compact. Users deserve better. If other companies are so on their last leg they need to excise huge chunks of user agency to remain viable as businesses, that is not my concern. My machine, at a fundamental level, is mine. Not the OS vendors.
We used to do what seemed like a beeter job at respecting that. Alas, those days are seemingly long gone or on the way out.
> technical restrictions being alluded to is the advertisement and telemetry that is baked in.
I'm pretty sure the complaint is about anti-piracy features. In that situation it's a picture perfect application of DMCA. Also it would make way more sense.
I’m not sure, but is Windows 10 not slightly different from previous releases insofar as you can directly download the ISO for Windows 10?
Unless you had an MSDN subscription it was a little more difficult to grab an ISO back in the day.
Of course, it’s still illegal to modify and upload the modified version...but you’d think the patcher would be an even more obvious route than normal these days if it’s so easy to download an ISO.
I’m not a Windows person, could somebody explain this a little bit better for me?
Copyright law does not grant you tge right to spread something you downloaded even if it was free. The original rights holder may decide who can and cannot host what part of their product for what reason. Free software usually permits you to redistribute the software you download, but there's no such freedom in closed source software. This is part of the "free as in speech" qualifier of open source software.
Microsoft does allow you to download the ISO for free, which is why I don't understand why they didn't include a patcher either.
Looking at the official twitter account for the project, it seems like the project maintainers (and likely their users) reside somewhere in the Middle East, given that they seem to speak Arabic. Perhaps the average Internet near the project's target audience are low enough to warrant uploading a customised, minimised ISO? I don't know, a patcher seems like a better choice to me. Maybe they'll switch models now because of the takedown?
> Copyright law does not grant you the right to spread something you downloaded even if it was free.
Software source code is copyrightable (to a large extent, for the past 30 years) in the US, but a program exe might not be as there's no artistic expression at all in the bit pattern alone.
So an exe might just fall under license terms.
Source: I have successfully filed software copyrights and trademarks.
That's so wrong it's almost painful. Copyright is the only reason why anyone pays attention to the license associated with compiled software. What would be the point of a license for an artefact not protected by copyright?
It also is absurd to suggest that there is artistic expression in source code but not in a direct translation of that same artistic expression.
And it's also worth remembering that binaries contain more than just executable machine code—they also contain strings, bitmaps etc. Are you claiming that strings and bitmaps cannot be copyrighted too?
Similarly, asserting a court erred in a spectacularly ridiculous way is not an argument.
Note that before 1989, rules in USA were quite different. Instead of: everything is IP, almost forever - explicit copyright registration was required for protection of works.
While object code was ruled as copyrightable for pretty obvious reasons, initial rulings seems quite consistent with law at the time. Current 100+ year copyright terms might seem similarly ridiculous to copyrights founders.
Yes, it is an argument. It is not evidence, it may not be compelling argument for you, but it’s unquestionably an argument.
I refuse to accept that courts deemed compiled code to not be a creative work or intellectual property. Remember—a lot of early computer code was written in assembler...
So you refuse to accept the fact, for which there is evidence[1], that in given time and place, courts ruled object code not to be copyrightable, and furthermore it was not a solitary ruling and it was consistent with the rules of law at the time, so you call the ruling spectacularly ridiculous.
You may call it an argument. I may then argue by refusing to accept it.
That's a crazy viewpoint, I've never signed any license agreement with microsoft, but if I were to have a copy of a windows 10 ISO, or even just calc.exe, I wouldn't be allowed to share it
Getting legal windows ISO download has been possible since at least Vista, though it wasn't as easy as it is now.
The issue is that ninjutsu essentially provided a hacked up image to download, a derivative product, which they didn't have a license to distribute and thus copyright bit them in the arse.
This is a story of a personal laptop of mine. Upgrading from Win 7 to win 8 with paid upgrade sometime after win 8 was 'stable'
The upgrade tool works fine until it doesn't.
When it chooses not to work, it will have you DL the upgrade files, as well as updates to OS, this can take forever and is a major point of failure for techs. (random hangs, reboots, loops, you name it)
But the really evil bullshit actually happens on successful upgrade. Oh that tool that said your laptop could 'upgrade fine' now can't, so sick of the BS revert to old installation.
Jk to find its no longer a valid bootable os now. had to repair win 7 installation to make bootable and was asked for product key... what? entered mine, sticker still gleaming on my laptop... Microsoft says invalid key! No worries, must be an accident, call MS CS. Am told that upon upgrading even though incomplete, I had willingly surrendered my old product key and it could never be used again. Ok... ask MS CS rep to please issue a new one? He says happily, but they no longer sell keys for windows 7, I could either buy an enterprise edition from them for if I remember correctly $7-800. In shock I looked it up and found at bestbuy for i think was 120...was advised to purchase from bestbuy as MS couldn't offer me the same(
incidentally not long after this was when they extended the EOL timeline for win7).
Screw all that noise, I just ran a SLIC and never thought about it again, laptop's still chugging along today.
So personal anecdotes whatever, but I have worked on far more than my share of PCs, and upgrading became so convoluted early on it was invariably 100x faster and easier to backup and clean install. Even when everything 'just works' when upgrading, sometimes it doesn't. You will have errors everywhere, random hangs reboots etc.
It's infuriating and it has persisted as an issue from Win XP to 10.
The upgrade path is only from Windows 7 to Windows 10 as far as I am aware. Microsoft extended licenses so that license for Windows 7 are valid for Windows 10 and vice versa. This might unfortunately have been after your story.
Windows XP never had an upgrade path (couldn't even change hardware like the motherboard safely) so it's progress in my mind. Windows 8 was a mess that was dropped shortly after release, I am sorry for all the souls who had to try it.
There is a very good backup tool embedded since Windows 7 that allows to snapshot and restore the system. Highly recommend to use.
>You can't just take a paid OS distribution, add some config and plonk it onto github.
I believe the issue is with licensing rather than cost here. You haven't been given a license that permits you to change and redistribute the software (as you would were it free (as in freedom) software).
Interesting case. If Microsoft really demands that a user does not disable features, I am looking forward to some taking this to court.
The thing is, software licenses are still largely uncharted territory. If I am not allowed to modify the system as my hardware executes it, will Microsoft take liability for any damage, material or immaterieal that could be caused by it? Think of an upgrade bricking your device (happened to a kindle of mine once) or a security hole that gets exploited.
On the other hand, there is this whole discussion about the legality of ad blocking. Often, publishers claim that it is a copyright infringement to disable ads on their site. I think the cases are pretty much the same: A party offering software to you under the condition that you execute it exactly as they want. I wonder what the closest thing in non-software law would be to such a stipulation.
You are right, they were distributing a modified version of Windows without permission. And there's nothing notable or interesting about that. It's a pretty clear-cut case of "don't do that".
But ALSO.. the language in the MS/BSA complaint states that tools that help the user disable Windows 10 OS features - some that arguably benefit MS more than the user - run afoul of the DMCA's anti-circumvention clauses, and that's a much broader statement that has nothing to do with an uploaded ISO.
If this stands, does it mean that I am not allowed to use similar tools to disable features on my legit copy of Windows 10? That's what the language in their complaint implies.
>But ALSO.. the language in the MS/BSA complaint states that tools that help the user disable Windows 10 OS features
does that matter? You can put whatever you want on a DMCA complaint. It's not going to be subject to any judicial review. I wouldn't be worried unless they actually initiate a lawsuit.
> No activation was not removed, a license is still required.
This was even explicitly stated in the linked article, but for some reason people keep asserting in this thread that it was a cracked version of windows.
Am I missing something, or are people just making big assumptions and not reading the article?
I can't legally give you something copyrighted even if you can't use it without a valid license code. It's still copyrighted.
But that's not what Microsoft is asserting here: the headline (which arguably conveys the main point) says it's about the anti-circumvention clauses of USA's DMCA law.
Yeah, because while distributing the basic .iso is illegal what are Microsoft's damages? They distribute it for free anyway, their losses are $0 from someone else distributing it.
If JK Rowling gave away Harry Potter ebooks because of COVID-19, you can't just take those books and replace all instances of "Wand" with "Penis" and distribute it because she made it available for no money. It's not all about money but also about moral rights; The right to the integrity of the work.
I think no one is claiming that distributing modified isos is legal, actually even distributing the unmodified ISO files would not be legal.
The problem is that Microsoft didn't make a take down request based one them distributing ISO files. But based on them "disabling features in windows" in that ISO files.
It is made even more interesting by the fact that to me, as an end user, it is absolutely unclear what i am suppose to delete/modify and what i am not.
How do I know that deleting or modifying a particular dll is a violation? It doesnt look any different than any other file.
Furthermore, if Windows craps out, which isn't rare, i might have to go into system files and commit dmca violation. As an alterbative, will a Microsoft send a technician to my house, or compwnsate me for the system being down?
Gets really sticky depending on why you say you are modifying things.
For example, the DMCA protects you if the modification is for educational purposes.
If they want to go down the route of arguing a contract violation, then the question about whether or not the contract is fair comes into play. You can't write a contract that takes everything and gives nothing in return. So these license agreements which basically say "You can't don't own anything about this software, we have every right to sue the pants off you if you upset us, and we accept no liability if our software does anything bad" may very well be unenforceable (Doesn't come up that often because people are relatively sane).
The other interesting thing here is that these licenses may be doubly unenforceable as companies have been adding the "you accept all terms and conditions if you push this button". They are right in the same line as the "Warranty void if you remove this sticker" notices.
Microsoft being Microsoft, its such a shame so many video games still only support MS. Over the years MS has become really user hostile (well may be not as much as my samsung android phone I guess) with constant forced updates, forced adverts for their products. And now a DMCA for a project trying to help folks customize windows? Sigh!
Few days ago there was an update on Windows10 and my computer was restarted forcefully, upon booting back up I was greeted by a massive "in your face" type of advert for their Edge browser, couldn't quit it and had to see a big advert from MS about their stupid Edge browser. After I managed to close it, it decided to pin the browser to my task bar without asking me if it should.
I wish it was just the game makers needing to build for another platform which is the problem. Unfortunately a large problem is also graphics drivers. NVidia and AMD don't do much to help the open source community / linux with the development of their drivers, meaning they don't harness the power of the cards often times by significant margins comparing with Windows. There are other technical hiccups which make a difference as well.
AMD has excellent open source support. They embraced the Linux community a few years ago, and we now have a high quality AMD driver mainlined in the Linux kernel. Games run very well on AMD/Linux, including Steam/Proton.
It's NVIDIA that is completely Linux/OSS hostile, and still follows the broken proprietary driver approach they have been doing for years. On top of that they actively ignore the agreed community standards and build proprietary/inferior APIs because it's less work for them (like EGL).
I'm completely baffled by NVIDIA's approach to be honest. Especially with scientific workloads on Linux. It seems like investing in a small team to build high quality mainlined Linux drivers would be a net win for them for little cost.
Nvidia has always had super high quality Linux drivers. It’s their lack of desire to open source pieces of them to make them work better with desktop Linux that is the issue. I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of Nvidia GPUs used on Linux don’t have a screen connected to them, so supporting wayland isn’t really a priority.
> Nvidia has always had super high quality Linux drivers.
I assume you've never used an optimus enabled laptop on Linux? Or dealt with the horribly fragmented driver versions? Or the fact the binary blob installer likes to dump random files all over your system? Or DRM/KMS issues in the past? The wayland incompatibilities and refusal to support the GBM kernel API is just the latest in a long history of terrible Linux support.
AMD just works out of the box - high quality and fast drivers with zero config required.
Why would Nvidia care about supporting Wayland at this point in time? Steam itself doesn't even work properly with Wayland. 9 of 10 people are going to be using X right now and within the near future.
Wayland offers performance and security improvements over X, and is seeing rapid adoption on GNOME-based distributions. Since both Intel and AMD properly support Wayland through the GBM buffer API, Nvidia is going to be left behind unless they start improving or replacing their EGLStreams API instead of leaving it stagnant.
> its such a shame so many video games still only support MS
This is very true. It's a shame, but the only way to help this change is to create the market for video games that support other platforms, for example Linux, as well. Help make it profitable to develop games for Linux
There are already quite a lot of games on Steam that support Linux, especially if you add Wine/Proton [1] to the mix, where 78% of the top 100 games have a score of "Gold" (runs perfectly after tweaks), "Platinum" (runs perfectly out of the box), or is running natively on Linux. This means that you are no longer missing out on the huge library of games you were missing out on just a few years ago.
This is pretty different from that. It’s not just that they modified Windows, it’s that they provided a cracked version of the iso. If they just provided the tools to do it, it’d be one thing (and that probably wouldn’t have been attached by Microsoft). But given the evidence, this is perfectly reasonable for Microsoft.
Why does it matter? No company is going to do nothing if someone else distributes a modified versions of their software -- regardless of the modification. The fact that it's cracked or not is inconsequential to the discussion.
Free software licenses are specifically designed to allow distribution -- the exception that proves the rule. But even so, none of the companies listed will allow you to distribute modified binaries under their exact product names. Hence CentOS, Iceweasle, etc. Despite being open source and free software, these companies still want to define for themselves what "Firefox" and "Redhat" actually are.
I would consider things like automatically searching Bing for typing anything into the Windows search bar a pretty annoying feature. Especially when 99% of the reason to use such a search is to find a local program or Windows setting to open.
Problem is with the 20.04 edition of Windows, there's no user friendly way to do turn that feature off.
Putting all of the privacy settings to the most restrictive values doesn't disable it, nor does turning off internet search in search in the policy editor. You have to dig around and create manually named registry keys. IMO that's unreasonable behavior.
But that makes you think there's likely dozens if not 100+ other things like that. I hope Windows tool makers don't stop uncovering these things.
I wonder if anyone will call out MS for having an option in the policy editor to disable internet search when using Windows search, while it doesn't actually disable it. What would the legal action be there? Maybe a GDPR violation since now the personal things I type into my computer are sent to Bing without my consent.
FTA "Force Windows 10 and Cortana to use Firefox and your favorite search engine instead of Bing! This is the official port of Chrometana Pro for Firefox."
Right, but this should be on the purchase page of the OS. No one would know such a thing beforehand.
It's a combination of a purposeful lack of information and a sketchy UI decision because the option in the policy editor is there to interact with on the Pro edition of Windows. It should be at least greyed out like other Windows settings are when you can't use it for your edition of Windows.
You shouldn't have to pay $84+ / year (Enterprise edition) to disable having everything you type into the Windows search menu get searched on Bing. It used to be something you could turn off on all editions of Windows in earlier versions of Windows 10.
If MS were more open about user privacy, users wouldn't need to develop third party programs to discover and disable all of the traps MS lays in their OS to spy on folks.
Just checked: in Windows 8.1 (and therefore, all versions of Windows 10), the "Don't search the web or display web results in Search" Group Policy works fine in Pro/Enterprise/Education/Business. The "Disable Microsoft Consumer Experiences" one only works in Enterprise/Education, however.
If you are on Home, and don't have gpedit.msc, make a new DWORD in "Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer", call it "DisableSearchBoxSuggestions", and set it to 1. Upon reboot Bing will no longer appear in your start menu.
On my Windows 10 Pro 20.04 edition, that group policy has no effect. The only way to get rid of it was to use the registry edit you've also referenced.
I'm now running a 2004 updated Pro host with that Group Policy setting and don't see any web search results. I also checked my registry and I don't have that DWORD key.
Rebooting will refresh the group policy, so that should have worked. Maybe try also enabling the "Do not allow Web Search" policy which is adjacent in Admin Templates > Windows Components > Search. That seems to be all the configuration I have to make it work.
- Don't search the web or display web results in Search
- Don't search the web or display web results over metered connections
According to the help menu for the middle one it states: "If you enable this policy setting, queries won't be performed on the web and web results won't be displayed when a user performs a query in Search.".
You can see that setting listed on the bottom of the page, but it's not super clear because it's referencing an older version of Windows in those docs.
Maybe you have another tool blocking it, or you've blocked it at the /etc/hosts level in the past?
How does something like this get to the front page? Someone provides a cracked copy of Windows and calls it "Ninjitsu OS" and then cries foul when it's taken down because of course it was.
Is there that much of an anti-Microsoft sentiment that people upvote something like this uncritically?
I read the text and it says nothing like it. It's all about DMCA takedown for removing telemetry, not a single mention of distributing cracked ISO of windows.
Whichever legal assistant at BSA (not known for their subtly) wrote that take down was clearly confused but it's plainly clear that was targeted because it they distributed a modified Windows ISO.
There have always been tweaking tools for Windows unless we suddenly see a huge crackdown on the hundreds of other products that remove telemetry, etc, I would consider this overblown.
I used to like what they were doing with WSL, but now on the contrary it starts to worry me, because it can become an avenue of evil behavior against users/devs/open-source/...
But then it looked how Apple and Google did the same thing, successfully, and sailed away in terms of market share and now it wants to replicate the success.
The thing is, I don't think it is going to succeed. The likely thing that is already happening is that power users are leaving Windows and once power users leave the platform will die.
> The likely thing that is already happening is that power users are leaving Windows and once power users leave the platform will die
I would consider myself a power user, but the only reason I stick with Windows still is because I can't find a good reliable video editor on Linux -- and also some games.
Kdenlive makes doing super common things a lot more difficult and time consuming than what's available on Windows video editors and DaVinci Resolve has potential but it's the most crash prone piece of software I've run into on any platform, and also has severe audio quality issues when exporting mp4s (on my hardware at least -- I couldn't use it to create videos due to that).
But I would think at this point, power users are only a drop in the bucket compared to the gaming crowd in terms of audience size. Right now on Linux, gaming comes down to hoping 3rd party tools allow you to run most games you want, or you dual boot (really annoying) or you run KVM with a GPU pass-through to run Windows in a VM with native performance (approaching 1 level above power user level just to set this up and 2 video cards).
After twenty years on Debian I just bought a Windows laptop on the strength of WSL2 and Docker for Windows. Being able to play SimCity has been a bonus, and I feel like I have the best of both worlds thanks to recent Windows additions. It isn't perfect but the Linux Desktop experience isn't either. Nor is OSX, in my experience.
My point being: I've been a very stubborn desktop Linux user for a long time and have migrated to Windows. The traffic, I suspect, is going the opposite way to what you seem to expect, at least for now.
Hardly. Windows is still a superior platform for many tasks in ways that there are no realistic alternatives for in other OSs, not to mention being generally much less of a headache to work with despite its severely degrading user experience.
Accessing mounted drives can be avoided by putting your source code in WSL 2's file system, but it is for sure still a pressing issue since folks tend to have multiple drives and want to access them within WSL.
But to your point, WSL 2 does have some really big issues pending tho, such as https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4166 and https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4699. The TL;DR is that WSL 2 will happily use 80% of your system's memory by default and it never frees disk up in the VM that it runs in. The VM's disk will continue to grow and grow unless you as an end user run some PowerShell incantations to shrink the vhdx. In other words, deleting files from within WSL 2 won't clear the disk space used by the VM.
Within like 2 hours of using WSL 2 for the first time I found my system grinding to a halt because it used 11GB of memory and chewed through 60GB of my SSD since when I copied my source code into WSL 2's file system (to avoid the poor performance documented in your issue) I forgot I had a ton of wave files included in one of the directories since I kept those in a private directory in my podcast site's source code.
I don’t get why WSL is better than a Linux VM in hyper-v or virtual box, until it’s way smoother than it currently is. You can full screen the VM to work entirely in dwm or i3 or whatever if that’s your thing, plus Xpra and SSH exist if you want to run Linux stuff alongside Windows (I assume there are free clients for both in Windows?). With that way of working you can even run Linux somewhere else to offload the resource use almost entirely, and if local it takes seconds to suspend the whole thing.
The last thing I’d want, working with Linux tools, is to have another thing I have to eliminate as a source of trouble when anything breaks.
Power users customize their own installation, they don't download a modified ISO from Yandex. This isn't aimed at power user but at regular users who don't understand what was done to it or the risk of downloading your OS from an untrusted source. It's so easy to turn them into rootkit encrusted ISOs and just call them "NEW! Updated Ninjutsu OS v2.0".
I mean for the fact you have less and less to say with regards to your installation. I have been Windows user for many years but around 4-5 years ago I got fed up with the fact Microsoft decides on a daily basis to change completely the stuff I own and not let me have anything to say about it. I don't want to have any Live accounts to log in to my machine, I don't want significant updates installed without me having anything to say about it. I want to spend time doing actual work and not babysitting the OS because I just got interrupted by another Microsoft idea.
Currently the only Windows I personally use is a VM I use to do my remote work because I am forced to use Windows. Just this weekend I got the very significant Edge update that completely blew my setup and caused me to spend an entire day to fix. As I am paid by the hour this is pretty significant: unhappy client, lots of work stacked.
You would think a backup would help? After all this is VM that I basically don't touch. The only site I open is the one I use for remote connection. The only tool I ever run is Edge. Unfortunately, it was not possible for me to revive the backup and not have it immediately do its thing.
See, this bit about the Live account is where you and I differ. It's now so much easier just to have my Live account that mirrors my Local User account, except I use a PIN to login instead of a password and my Win10 license is bound to my Live account so if I need to reinstall and reactivate I don't have to screw around with manually typing keys or having to call MS to activate, it simply works.
I've just returned to Windows for the first time in 20 years having had a pet VM of the kind you describe for Windows tasks before. I am pretty astonished that I am forced to update so often and that Windows still needs reboots for most of its systems. Compared to only updating for the occasional kernel patch when I was a Linux desktop user on Debian it is almost comical.
That's due to a fundamental difference in how each OS handles files. Linux will let you replace a file that is open in another running process, and Windows won't. Each way of doing things has its pros and cons. It isn't the kind of thing that can be easily resolved.
> I don't see a power-user exodus from Windows, really.
The power users outside of the MS ecosystem already left Windows a while ago you mean. A lot of mainstream tech tools & languages only have a medium support on Windows which is not really prioritized that much compared to the Mac & Linux versions. WSL is a big move to try to win those power users back.
Did you even read the article? Someone took ISO and modified it for re-distribution which is piracy. It has absolutely nothing to do with disabling features on your own Win10 installation.
Maybe the linked article has been updated since you posted, but this is not true of the current article.
Yes, they were distributing a modified ISO and it probably should/could have been taken down on straight copyright grounds. But the article is about the fact that rather than concentrating on this clear violation, the DMCA complaint specifically calls out the modifications as infringing because "the link provides a work around technical restrictions of the software". This distinction is directly addressed in the paragraph that starts "At first view, some may conclude that Ninjutsu OS amounts to a heavily modified yet pirated version of Windows 10."
Seems like you can download Windows nowadays, and you need to buy the license key separately. I am wrong? (I ask naively, because I am not a Microsoft user)
Yes, that is how it works, and you can buy a key right inside the Windows Store app so you don't even have to go digging in Microsoft's website nor a reseller site.
Hang on. So this is the Business Software Association acting on behalf of Microsoft issuing a takedown notice to Microsoft-owned Github? Sounds like this could have been solved with a couple of internal emails. Or more likely BSA are just going off on one without Microsoft's input.
>Sounds like this could have been solved with a couple of internal emails
This is actually what I'd least like to see Github become i.e. takedowns based on an internal bigcorp emails, with a pristine PR message sent out only if people complain.
It's much nicer that it's out in the open as it is.
[edit] Not so blatent abuse, apparently the repo included windows iso derivatives...
> Business Software Association acting on behalf of Microsoft.
Oh wait a sec... Another BS third party Github DMCA complaint? This sounds very similar to the "REACT" Github DMCA complaint last month also covered by TF [0]. Where someone was (not) using Casio's software on an ARM SBC inside a plastic Casio case.
"REACT" [1], "BSA" [2]... they are both non-profit, why are they both so comfortable using blatant DMCA abuse as a means to silence content their members disapprove of?
The title is incorrect, imo. The website offered tweaked ISO Windows 10, which is commercial product. Why don't they offer a script, a software for all of these tweaks?
Ninjutsu OS appears to be a full ISO file containing a tweaked Windows installation source. Why not release everything as a tool that applies all the customizations on an installation from the official ISO?
The tools that are used to implement that customization (Win10-Initial-Setup-Script and O&O ShutUp10) were always available. So why not just publish the recipe? Do people still download OS and antivirus software from random sources, like a Yandex drive?
This is dumb clickbait. They weren’t distributing some script to tweak a Windows installation. They offered a download of the whole Windows package, with their tweaks added.
I disagree that it's clickbait. The wording of the BSA, clearly specified in the article, makes it interesting and worthy of highlight.
Article TL;DR:
"the complaint goes on to highlight several features of Ninjutsu OS that are claimed to be infringing. As advertised and specifically highlighted by BSA/Microsoft they are:
– Customize Windows 10 with powerful tweak and optimize.
– Protect your privacy by tweak and customize Windows 10.
– Disable many of the annoying features built into Windows.
– Unwanted Windows components removal.
– Remove/Disable many Windows programs and services."
The amount of telemetry that gets block by my DNS sinkhole when running the windows 10 maschine i have for work is insane. Even with the settings on maks privacy. In a way i think Microsoft should be happy someone is using windows for pentesting. Or that windows is not to o bad to use with a few tweaks.
Everytime I have an important meeting I have to make sure i am not going to get one of those force starts that can take hours.
People should use NTLite to customize their own ISO files (downloaded directly from Microsoft). You can never trust a customized ISO from the internet.
NTLite comes from a trusted company, in the business of the administration of Windows installations. Still much more trustworthy than some random website allowing ISO downloads.
> At first view, some may conclude that Ninjutsu OS amounts to a heavily modified yet pirated version of Windows 10. However, a video explaining how the software works suggests that users will actually need their own license for a genuine copy of Windows 10 to get the modifications up and running properly. Ninjutsu’s creator informs TF that’s indeed the case.
That is literally opposite of how it works. As Windows EULA does not give you rights to distribute derivative works, sharing practically any kind of modified Windows image is illegal, ever if you only change default desktop background image. But circumventing activation for yourself can actualy be legal in some specific scenarios.
There are several companies and even security companies that modify Windows 10 and remove unwanted programs.
A couple that come to mind are Malwarebytes "Adwcleaner" and FireEye's "commando-vm" (found on Github).
But I do see a problem with Ninjutsu OS offering an preconfigured Windows ISO as others have mentioned.
I think Ninjutsu OS will be allowed to continue if they just offer some tools and scripts to modify a "normal" Windows10 iso instead like FireEye does.
Also, I hads never heard of Ninjutsu OS until now.
I will be looking forward to playing with it.
(Streisand Effect)
I have no opinion about Ninjutsu OS because I'm not the target market. But I would have never even heard about it without this DMCA complaint, and I presume many who might be interested in it heard about it first from news about this DMCA complaint. Just pointing this out.
Not really sure how much of this is still true. Since cloud services and locked devices took over most of the software that people use, it doesn't come up much anymore.
Interesting question and answer, thanks for the link. To save others a click / searching for the relevant parts, these seem to be it:
> since it's not copyright infringement for you to apply a patch, it's also not copyright infringement for someone to give you a patch.
> For example, Galoob's Game Genie, which patches the software in Nintendo cartridges, does not infringe Nintendo's copyrights. ``Having paid Nintendo a fair return, the consumer may experiment with the product and create new variations of play, for personal enjoyment, without creating a derivative work.''
For the EU, merely this is said:
> The European Software Directive (adopted by the UK in 1992) gives users the freedom to copy, run, modify, and reverse-engineer lawfully acquired programs.
Given the reasoning "if it's not copyright infringement to patch, it's also not infringement to give you a patch", which I honestly don't quite follow, this ought to mean that the law works the same way in the EU. (The reason I don't follow that logic is that copyright doesn't dictate what I can do with information I already have: it's about distribution as far as I know. So of course it's okay for me to apply a patch when not considering any law other than copyright (at least from my not-a-lawyer and European perspective), but that doesn't mean I can make what might perhaps be argued to be a derivative work and spread that around.)
It's not quite clear what is published here. What copyrighted material is it that is accessed through somme kind of "circumvention" and what is the circumvention?
The transformative factor seems rather clear. People want the many altered things and consider it different enough to go out of their way to find it (despite it not reducing their out-of-pocket cost).
The nature of the work is that it is a tool rather than a work of fiction which is also in favor of fair use.
The amount taken is substantial, but it has already been ruled that even 100% taken can still be fair use. It also contributes a great many man-hours of work though which means it wasn't just a blind copy/paste either.
The effect on the potential market is the big thing here. MS would claim they lose money by not being able to spy on users or show them ads. However, their licensing scheme remains untouched which seems to indicate that theft is not a motivating factor. Considering the use of the new work, it could be argued that ads and telemetry would be blocked by a DNS filter anyway and no actual profit would be lost. Further, those people would have moved on to the free alternative Linux which is already the defacto standard for a lot of pen testing and event the license profit would be lost. Then there's the question about if collecting that data is even legal (I don't believe it has ever been tried in court) and how that would interact with the DMCA.
It really doesn't seem like a case MS would really want to go to court over.
This is a very charitable interpretation of fair use.
>The transformative factor seems rather clear. People want the many altered things and consider it different enough to go out of their way to find it (despite it not reducing their out-of-pocket cost).
Is it really that transformative? It might be from a user-privacy point of view, but if consider all parts of the operating system, it's negligible.
>The nature of the work is that it is a tool rather than a work of fiction which is also in favor of fair use.
This seems to be a misinterpretation of the law. That part of the test (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#2._Nature_of_the_copy...) was intended to prevent copyrighting of facts. In this regard, an operating system is probably closer to fiction than non-fiction. I'm not aware of any exception for "tools".
>The amount taken is substantial, but it has already been ruled that even 100% taken can still be fair use. It also contributes a great many man-hours of work though which means it wasn't just a blind copy/paste either.
Again, if you consider the entire operating system, even weeks/months of effort by a single person would be dwarfed by the millions (tens of? hundreds of?) of man-hours that went into making the entire OS.
The emulator community developed .ips files to allow distribution of modifications to ROM files, without having to worry about the legal issues of distributing modified ROM files themselves. I'm surprised there aren't tools to use this or something similar with .ISOs.
Question since the article doesn't make it clear - if they distribute ISO-s - this is clear DMCA violation. But tool that modifies iso you have obtained legally is definitely not.
They call it "a software tool that modifies Windows" but the tools that do the actual modifying are Win10-Initial-Setup-Script and O&O ShutUp10. Judging from a video tutorial linked in the article this is a customized ISO.
This isn't related to that, and the same thing would have happened no matter where it was hosted. It was a DMCA issue, not Microsoft giving themselves special treatment with GitHub.
The project got hit for providing an ISO with license check removed, not for customizing windows. Over the last ~25 years I don't recall any of the windows customization tools getting hit with DMCA... because they didn't provide a technically illegal copy of the OS with them.
This is incorrect - the license check is not removed. (It's still a violation of copyright laws because they're publishing a derivative work without permission.)
If somebody still wondered, why Microsoft acquired Github, this article provides the answer. They bought the ability to control major distribution point of non-proprietary software and shut down at will any perceived threats.
There's been people patching and customising Windows for many years, but most of the time that was done in the form of gaining an official ISO, patching it with a program on your computer and then using that to install. With that model the user is the one violating the license, not the distributor, though often these configurations used the official Windows API for OEMs so it was legally grey enough that I've never heard of any lawsuits.
If these people just provided an exe and some patch files to turn an official ISO into the same thing as they offered on their website, they'd likely be in the clear.
I'm not entirely sure what the point of the project is though, loads of pentesting tools only run well on Linux and there's plenty of Linux pentesting kits already. Why not just run Kali in a fullscreen virtualbox and be done with it? Or load Kali into WSL2, assuming Microsoft has fixed the hardware access limitations in WSL1?