42.9 GB of Microsoft Source Code Ms-Dos 3.3 to Windows XP Is Out There

Many years ago there was a similar leak and I noticed a directory of GNU utils and wondered exactly what is asked towards the end of the article. I don't think the utils were actually used in the Windows version this was included with, so I and colleagues at the time were wondering why it was even there in the first place. We figured they just preferred unix-ish tools over their Microsoft tools for developing the OS.

Everything about this is so familiar I'm wondering now if this is that same leak just getting a second wind... a sort of reprise.

This was back in the day that 43Gb was still considered huge (and the uncompressed archive is significantly more massive!), so there wasn't much incentive to keep it around. So unless I wrote about it somewhere, I probably wouldn't be able to find out if it was the same version as this.