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I am not aware of any earlier publicly documented attempts to build XP from leaked sources.

I suspect msft provides sources (for audit) to governments all over the world if they want the contract.

>Why is this news?

Because the more general public (for a certain degree of generality) apparently didn't know about this until this week. Usenet is now seen mostly as a device for good ol' piracy.

Probably because it's now marginally less likely that MS will pursue any hobbyist attempt to work with the codebase, considering all those versions are long dead.

Do you have a link (or links) that corroborates this?

Here is a mention of the leak of some Windows source code (in Russian): https://www.securitylab.ru/forum/messages/forum18/topic18684...

I came here to say that as well...