Microsoft Corp., even while mounting a new campaign against open-source software, has quietly been using such free computer code in several major products, as well as on key portions of a popular Web site -- despite denying last week that it did so. Software connected with the FreeBSD open-source operating system is used in several places deep inside several versions of Microsoft's Windows software, such as in the "TCP/IP" section that arranges all connections to the Internet. The company also uses FreeBSD on numerous "server" computers that manage major functions at its Hotmail free e-mail service, whose registered users exceed 100 million and make it one of the Web's busiest sites. Microsoft acknowledged its repeated use of open-source code Friday, in response to questions about the matter. Just two days earlier, it had specifically denied the existence of any such software at Hotmail.
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