MS Cites National Security to Justify Closed Source

It just gets better!

"A senior Microsoft Corp. executive told a federal court last week that sharing information with competitors could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. He later acknowledged that some Microsoft code was so flawed it could not be safely disclosed.

The bold statements and candid admissions were part of Jim Allchin's testimony during two days in court here before Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who is hearing the case of nine states and the District of Columbia seeking stricter penalties for Microsoft's antitrust behavior.

Allchin, group vice president for platforms at Microsoft, was the final executive lined up to defend the Redmond, Wash., software developer. Like company Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates before him, Allchin highlighted the security problems he foresaw that could result from technical information disclosure requirements sought by the nonsettling states.

"It is no exaggeration to say that the national security is also implicated by the efforts of hackers to break into computing networks," Allchin testified. "Computers, including many running Windows operating systems, are used throughout the United States Department of Defense and by the armed forces of the United States in Afghanistan and elsewhere."

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