Microsoft has taken offline an utility it supplies to help download DVD and USB images of Windows 7 purchased online, while it investigates allegations that GPL-ed code was used to develop the tool.

Microsoft has pulled a Windows 7 media and administration tool from the Microsoft Store site for apparently violating the GPL. The company yanked ImageMaster after Within Windows blogger Rafael Rivera spotted the disc reading and burning tool was a CodePlex project licensed under GPLv2.

Microsoft had released a tool in mid-November that generated bootable USB media or a DVD from the download version of Windows 7 and that conflicted with the GNU Public License. They now followed up by putting the tool under GPLv2.

The Free Software Foundation has said it has approached Apple because a GPL2 licensed application, a port of GNU Go, is available from Apple's App Store

The FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) Community knows, thanks to leaked Microsoft internal documents, that since about 1998 Microsoft has been in a sort of war against them. Because of this, it is not surprising that the FOSS community has looked at Microsoft with suspicion and has vilified it to no end. But, is Microsoft really evil?

Linux creator Linux Torvalds says that the GPL2 (GNU General Public License) is still the best licensing option for the Linux Kernel. Torvalds has consistently rejected the GPL version 3 licensing scheme, released last year by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), for the Linux Kernel.

Reports that Microsoft had to release the Hyper-V Linux Integration Components (LinuxIC) under the GPLv2 because they had violated the GPL have been rebutted by Microsoft and Vyatta.

While poking through the UDF-related internals of the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool, I had a weird feeling there was just wayyyyyyyyy too much code in there for such a simple tool. A simple search of some method names and properties, gleaned from Reflector’s output, revealed the source code was obviously lifted from the CodePlex-hosted (yikes) GPLv2-licensed ImageMaster project.

Despite the rather surprising news that Microsoft won't have a comprehensive open source strategy until 2015, there's increasing evidence that it has at least established its shorter-term tactic: to head off the growing use of GNU/Linux.