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What if Microsoft went Open Source?
An anonymous reader writes "This article on newsforge takes a speculative look at what would have to happen if Microsoft decided to jump on the Open Source bandwagon (using Microsoft Project as the source of speculation). Amusing to think about, unlikely to happen."
It's not happening, for obvious reasons. Companies exist to make money!
MS is doing just fine without being OS!
You never know, it might just eventually improve their products. Look at Netscape/Mozilla!
What if Microsoft went Open Source?... Pigs shall fly and people will ski in Hell
Slashdot comments would decrease by 50%?
There is a reason why Microsoft doesn't go open source that a lot of people don't realize, or at least they don't think about it. Sure Microsoft made the code for the NT Kernel, Office, VS.NET, etc. So they can legally release all that code. But there are a lot of things within Windows and Office that Microsoft can't legally release the code for. Like the defragger that is made by some German company. A lot of device drivers written by hardware people also. Windows now technically also includes Sun Java, which they can't release the source for.
So while MS could open lots of source, there would be quite a few holes in it, and all the geeks who bothered to look would be wondering what was up with the swiss cheese.
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What if the sky were pink?
What if we lived in the year 3000?
What if Russia had not become a communist state?
What if the moon turns out to be the home of our overlord and master?
What if I became Pope?
All of these things have something in common. Can you spot what that is? Yes, they're all based on pure fantasy!
As stated, this won't happen. First reason, money. Second reason, control. Third reason, No one would use it once they got a look at the source.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
What if America was a real democracy and not run by oligarhic oportunists... ?
...
Unlikely... Impossible
I expect clocks would began running backwards shortly before the fabric of universe unraveled and everyone simultaneously imploded.
I picture in my mind, many gleeful hackers and an overwhelming wave of new exploits, that might in fact cause more people to switch to Linux, where the support community is much more on top of things, and a reliable infrastructure is in place.
And Slashdot readers shall get laid.
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
There are almost certainly pieces of (current) Windows code that can't be released under an open license. So the idea of the entire Windows code base being GPL'd will never happen. Even if earlier versions of Windows were "clean", they still wouldn't be released: older versions of MS software are the biggest threat to the newest versions. According to Google Zeitgeist, there are more people running "obsolete" Microsoft OSes (95, 98, NT) than "current" ones (2000, XP).
OTOH, Windows could follow Apple's lead, and use Linux or BSD as a starting point for their next-generation OS. The problem with that idea is that it doesn't really match MS's current goals of DRM, software leases, and increasing MS's revenues.
(I RTFA the day it was published.)
On a more serious note, MS could acutally open up, say, the Win XP kernel to the public. The kernel doesn't do the brunt of the OS work; it's kind of the foundation, not the building. That way, MS couldn't be acused of being monopoilistic, but they could be monopolistic in practice.
Also, maybe we could see some Win XP clones? For free? Of course that right there is why MS wouldn't open up a current version of Windows, but they could open up, say, Win 95. Of course, knowing hackers, there probably would be a free version of Windows out in 6 months, and MS would (eventually) be undercut by boxed versions of this "free Windows".
MS couldn't open up Windows. Even if developers couldn't _use_ the code from Windows, they could read it so they could create a free version of Windows in ~3 years. And then they'd undercut MS's price, and eventually MS would go out of business.
Of course this very scenario may happen with WINE + Linux. But, of course, this is going to take time. If MS opened up Windows, they would only speed the process.
And Bill doesn't want that, now does he?
If Microsoft DID actually "get it" and go opensource, dropping their strategy and opening up code and changed their development ideas...
would the OSS/FS community be able to handle that ?
and would anyone help them out ?
(assuming that, let's say it's released under GPL or BSD style licenses)
How many people read that and wished for MS to go OS? ;oP
In the 70's and 80's we speculated that cars would use a clean energy source by the year 2000. But nobody realized that SUVs would become popular and get even worse gas milage.
The same thing will probably happen with Microsoft. A huge business like that does not change overnight. It is doubtful that we see any changes until it is too late. Proprietary businesses no matter how good will eventually lose out to 3rd parties. There is a window in businesses like IBM and Microsoft. When that time is up, they will get hit hard.
IBM at one time was completely proprietary. Piece by piece 3rd party manufacturers replaced IBM hardware. Eventually IBM clones were around and could compete with IBM directly. Over a span of less than 10 years IBM lost most if it's desktop market share. Now IBM doesn't even bother with consumer hardware. The last couple of things to go were videocards and hard drives. Companies like NVIDIA and ATI were innovators and blew by IBM in the videocard market. Then the IBM hard drives began to get chinsey and they discontinued that as well.
I am speculating that the same thing with Microsoft is going to occur. Right now there are competing office suites, desktop os', web browsers etc. These products will eventually replace the need for Microsoft products one by one as more people use them. In a matter of years more people will be using open/free software and look back to the days of Microsoft and either laugh or feel dread and angst. The days of a software proprietary model are limited and if Microsoft and other companies don't change to accept opensource, then they will ultimately lose their market shares.
Project has huge dependencies on Office but not vice versa. Typically Project team picks up office bits around 90 days after Office stabilizes.
All of the common code is in MSO9.dll, or MSO10.dll, whatever, as well as "external" dependencies like MSXML.dll or MDAC from Web Data, or Trident (MSHTML). I'm not going to claim that you can't GPL Project without releasing the rest (don't know enough), but I can tell you the codebases are very intertwined. Does GPL still make sense given this info?
Basically all Project is is a specialized Access database application. (BTW, did you know that Exchange storage engine and Microsoft Access are both based on Jet? Exchange == Jet Blue. Access == Jet Red. And DHCP and Crypto DBs are stored in
Microsoft Windows has a defragger? That's so cool! Now when I get blown up while playing Quake I can just alt-tab out, punch the defragger, and watch the shocked expression on my enemies' faces as my pieces fly back together! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
Forget going OSS with some minor application. Apple has allready proven you can go half OSS with an OS and not run into big problems. Microsoft, no matter what else you say about them employs some smart programmers. They could release a decent linux distribution of their own rewriting Microsoft Windows as a closed source window manager that you have the option to run within your X enviroment. Support could be such that the MS Window manager would be garenteed to interoperate with their setup but was a standard Window Manager so could optinally be run on top of any *nix system on the market. This would achieved the desired greater market penetration, as well al allow MS to dip their collective little toe into the OSS market while retaining total control over that intellectial property they prize above all else. It would also allow them to focus on the GUI and high level layers of computing systems rather than worrying about the underlying architecture, which they really have no stake in other than as investments in companies like Intel and AMD. Why bother continuing to write, maintain and update a kernel when you can retain the same market power while just writing a desktop manager/window manager combination product?
--CTH
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Think about it, if the cost of the OS is gone one of the main reasons to swich to linux (not the biggest, but at least one of the more easily noted) is gone. If the source is open, will be no more security by obscurity, a lot of eyes will detect and fix the hundreds of remaining critical bugs in the code, maybe even make Win95 as stable as XP or Linux, or make really safe XP. If Windows now have almost the entire market share on the desktop and not so in the server market, with this not only expand even more their dominance in the desktop, but will have the same dominance in the the server market, and more than this, the market will expand with free/open windows.
What about Microsoft? How it will generate revenues? With services, support, not so free apps (i.e. Office), having their specific distribution, using it as a plataform of selling their own services (passport?).
Wheres the incentive to buy the boxed product? MS Office isn't linux. Most people buy linux in a box instead of downloading it because, for first time users anyway, it is a lot easier to install and get started. There is also a lot of documentation (i.e. on paper) that comes with the boxed retail versions of linux. However, as I said before, Office isn't linux. It almost as easy to install a downloaded copy as it is to install the boxed copy. There won't be as much incentive for the end user to go and get the retail version, especially if they are simply casual Office users. Most people will only need to perform simple tasks on Word and Excel, and a simple download and install would allow them to do that without paying money. Of couse you're going to have lots of people who will still pay money, but the casual end user who really doesn't give a damn about whether its open source or not will simply download it.
With VS, you get the source for all of the MFC, ATL and C run-time libraries. The code is at least as good as any of the GPL'd code i've run across - and at least they know where to put their leading brackets (on the next line, not immediately after the "if")!!
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
If they ever made Windows Free Software (as defined by the FSF), then a huge part of Stallman's war will have been won, no matter if this was the way he visioned it or not.
This would be a huge, monumental win for Free Software, because the most visual basis of almost all desktop computers in the world would be free software.
Will it happen? No.
Thought MS already had lots of open sores ?......
That is really hard to imagine when you try to remember what happened. Go waaay back to the days of the Altair "computer", where hobbyists and future geeks would order the computer by mail. Go to meetings and swap programs and ideas. Then came Paul Allen and Bill Gates and wrote basic for it. It was a biz project from the beginning, aimed at making money. Now there is nothing wrong with making money, we all making money. But to imagine Microsoft as Open Source is really hard when you see how they complained about people swapping their Basic as they did with all the software for that computer. Now _selling_ software for the Altair seemed like overkill and I guess it was but it seemed that their plan worked quite well but to me it doesn't seem like Microsoft is built around the open source mind set at all(gasp) :)
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