Last week we posted an article for Windows 7 users to download a utility to make a bootable USB recovery stick.  Well, looks like that feature is [temporarily] gone.

So what gives?

It appears Microsoft lifted some GPL code to make their ImageMaster tool for bootable USBs.  Interesting.

We posted how you could make your own nt60 USB recovery stick.  Check it out.

From eWeek here is a bit of detail:

The ImageMaster project, hosted on Codeplex, is described on its site as “a .Net C# application for reading and writing disc images.” In a Nov. 6 posting on the Within Windows blog, Rafael Rivera described how he had a “weird feeling” after poking through the WUDT’s internals that “there was just wayyyyyy too much code in there for such a simple tool.”

Rivera then claims he did some more digging. “A simple search of some method names and properties…revealed the source code was obviously lifted from the CodePlex-hosted (yikes) GPLv2-licensed ImageMaster project. (The author of the code was not contacted by Microsoft.”

According to Rivera, Microsoft may have violated ImageMaster’s terms for use of the open-source code declining to provide “source code for their modifications to ImageMaster” and stapling on their own licensing terms, “further restricting your rights to the software.”

As the article from Mr. Rivera got popular with mainstream media, Microsoft was forced to pull it down and take a closer look at what was going on.  Microsoft said they will investigate the situation and correct any wrong doing.

If you would like to make your own nt60 bootable USB stick for Vista or Windows 7 using your source files we posted a great article about it back in October.

Source: eWeek [thanks guys!]