Microsoft has reposted a tool to the Internet that aids installing Windows 7 on netbooks and computers without an optical drive.

The Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool was withdrawn when open sourcers complained that the software appeared to use open-source code licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL v2).

Microsoft admitted that it did and said sorry. It said that it would repost the tool and make it open source under the terms of the GPL. Although it took longer than anyone thought, Redmond posted the open-source version of the tool on its site CodePlex.com. Apparently the testing and localization took longer than we expected.

Also, the whole effort to get Windows 7 onto a Netbook now takes longer as several other pieces of code that had been included with the tool are now separate downloads.