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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.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
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.)
You're right of course that it will never happen, but Open Source Windoze would be useful since it would make it easier to create Windoze emulation environments and would remove any need to purchase Windoze to run Windoze-only apps.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
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.
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 ?......