If Microsoft Went Open Source

From an Anonymous Reader: "The BBC's Bill Thompson has written a speculative article about the possibility of Microsoft attempting to secure their place in the future of operating systems by creating an open operating system. From the article: 'They allocate a billion dollars worth of programmers to shine and polish [The new OS] for a year, improving its compatibility with Windows Server technologies, donating parts of the Windows and Office code bases under the GPL and turning it into the world's best operating system.' Could this ever happen?

Comments

Wrong emphasis

[nokilli]

Microsoft's role shouldn't be in improving the OS, it should be in creating the infrastructure necessary to allow the umpteen-zillion Windows developers out there to improve the OS instead.

I don't know how many of you have contributed to an OSS project, but, at least for those projects that are well-established the process can be a lot of work and not a little bit intimidating. Some progress has been made on the tool front to make it easier but it still takes way too much effort to get a patch mainstreamed on the really big projects.

What Microsoft should do is open up their software, and invest their money in more programmers, but not to do coding, to act as support for the rest of us who do the coding.

Make it so that if I find a bug, all I have to do is fix it and submit a patch. That's it. Nothing more. Nothing less.

This is the one opportunity they have that I don't see Linux/*BSD ever possessing. The kind of work necessary to support large projects is the very last thing most of us want to do. Sourceforge is littered with the remains of OSS projects that were fun to code and get working, but that nobody wants to maintain anymore.

They'd still make gobs of money. Ever browse their help wanted section? Sometimes it seems as if half the listings there are for build engineers. Guys whose only job it is to build Windows and all the other projects. Casual/notive users are never going to attempt this on their own (Gentoo/LFS users notwithstanding), and you'd be crazy to accept builds from third-parties given the complexity we're talking about and the potential for malware.

It's the best thing Microsoft could do right now. Which is why they won't do it. It's like what they say about generals always fighting the last war. Gates and Ballmer got where they are by hewing to a specific ideology. They're not changing their minds in this lifetime or the next, even if its clear that that ideology is antiquated and obsolete.
--
Why didn't you know?

Re:Wrong emphasis

[TapeCutter]

"What Microsoft should do is open up their software, and invest their money in more programmers, but not to do coding, to act as support for the rest of us who do the coding."

I think IBM has that bussiness sewn up already.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Rahga]

"Sourceforge is littered with the remains of OSS projects that were fun to code and get working, but that nobody wants to maintain anymore."

This was true once, but I don't think it holds much water anymore. There's much more esteem these days given to the guys who do the hard work of maintaining a project that actually works... There is a point where people want to maintain a project that is important and makes a different in people's lives, a point beyond the fun-hack level, and you rarely see entry level developers there.

Anybody can start up an open source project, but most of them never get to the point where the project is usable and well-made. The only exceptional new project I've seen lately is Ruby on Rails, and it's functional and well-documented to the point where it can't probably can't fail at the point where the initial developers lose steam.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Nasarius]

What Microsoft should do is open up their software, and invest their money in more programmers, but not to do coding, to act as support for the rest of us who do the coding.

Ah, so you support the "free as in slave labor" open-source model?

Re:Wrong emphasis

[ajp]

>> Make it so that if I find a bug, all I have to do is fix it and submit a patch. That's it. Nothing more. Nothing less.

You don't know how frightening that is. Your bug is my feature. Your "fix" breaks me. Or your bug is an invitable side effect of some other necessary but non-obvious code. You can't just submit "fixes" with "nothing more, nothing less" in Linux. How in the fsck do you think you would ever be able to do this in Windows?

Mod me flame-bait if you like. I'm not ignorant enough to get modded "interesting".

Re:Wrong emphasis

[skiflyer]

It's the best thing Microsoft could do right now. Which is why they won't do it. It's like what they say about generals always fighting the last war. Gates and Ballmer got where they are by hewing to a specific ideology. They're not changing their minds in this lifetime or the next, even if its clear that that ideology is antiquated and obsolete.

So you said alot, fine... then you make this massive claim at the end even though you have absolutely no support for it. Where's the clear evidence that this is the best thing for Microsoft like you make it sound? Where in the world are you finding any evidence to claim that their current ideology is antiquated and obselete?

I know this is an OSS friendly place to post messages, but come on. I'm pretty sure MS is still happy with their current business plan, and I'm pretty sure it's still working well for them.... but really, if you think the best thing MS can do is go open source, tell us why, I'm really curious.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[croddy]

That's exactly why he's suggesting that they assign their most experienced engineers -- the ones who know best how the applications fit together and how all the little pieces interact -- to oversee the process of approving and applying those patches.

Because exactly as you've pointed out -- it's not the small maintenance and enhancement programming that makes a project good. It's the higher-level decisions by the project managers that can determine whether code changes will be successful.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[soceror]

if you pay, you can get ms source...
of course, you gotta be IN the industry

Re:Wrong emphasis

[nokilli]

Where in the world are you finding any evidence to claim that their current ideology is antiquated and obselete?

Here.

Do they keep making money the way things are going? Sure they do. But there won't be any growth, worse, Linux/*BSD continue to act like ducks pecking them to death.

So if they're lucky, their stock price stays where it is.

For Gates, everything is about growth. Making money hand over fist isn't enough. He's done that already.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Plac3bo]

But there won't be any growth

True, but when your software runs on ~90% of all desktops, how much growth do you really need.

MS does not need growth, they need to maintain their current position. I am very hopeful that they will fallout, but, right now, it would require a major turn-around in industry to do so.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly how opensolaris.org will work, it seems. Sun engineers will maintain quality control over the codebase. After all, this will be the same solaris people put on mainframe-class servers, in addition to developers' PCs.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[jericho4.0]

Inkscape is another project that deserves some recognition. These are OSS projects where a small group of competent developers have identified a niche and delivered. I hope it inspires others.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[getwhipped]

How in the fsck? Brilliant!

Re:Wrong emphasis

[GodGell]

Anybody can start up an open source project, but most of them never get to the point where the project is usable and well-made. The only exceptional new project I've seen lately is Ruby on Rails...

erm... dude.. have you heard of Mozilla? Mozilla Firefox is currently on the way to taking IE's crown away. Mozilla Thunderbird is on the way to taking outlook's crown away. this comment is being written in FF.

and the most beautiful thing is even though microsoft does recognise FF and TB as ie and outlook's rivals, but does not seem to be pissed out enough to try to stop the project (which is usually their way of competing), and that's because ie and outlook comes with winflop. so if someone buys a copy of winflop, then immediately deletes the crappy ie and outlook from it to repla ce it with FF and TB, microsoft will still get the same amount of money and they don't even have to use more bandwidth for the update services of ie.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[sumdumass]

How would that be slave labor? You must have some eronious idea of slavery.

Slaves don't volenteer to work free. They don't get up in the morning and think, I'll go do some free work for the next door neibor. Slaves are property and are forced to do this. There really is no choice in the matter. This is no were close to being slave labor.

At worst it would be a volenteer situation and how is that actually bad? The number of programers microsoft employs would only increase if they "invest their money in more programmers" so it isn't like your job would be replaced. At best, it would Make a better operating system and increase inovation by widening the fields of tallent availible While increasing security and operability. They wouldn't have to except everythign submitted either. It would be a situation of taking the best of the best and improving on the good ideas to make them the best.

Notice that i use slavery in the present tense term. Thats because it still exists today and is actualy legal in a few countries. A person (child) can be born into slaver as well as be sold into slavery in some countries. People are actualy abducted and sold into slavery and people are tricked into slavery in places were it isn't exactly legal. Ask a slave if they choose to be a slave and you might see the difference here.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Rahga]

I actually don't like Inkscape. Full disclosure, I'm familiar with vector graphics.

I've never, ever been a fan of the wretched SVG files that Sodipodi and Inkcape produces, and as I professionally use Illustrator CS, I just can't get the sort of smooth workflow going in Inkscape. It's been a few months, but modifying nodes was just about unbearable last time I tried.

Adobe Illustrator is just about flawless with SVG output... but only after you screen out the massive ammount of metadata junk it forces on output.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Rahga]

Mozilla predates Internet Explorer by quite a large margin. It's not some fresh, pimply-faced startup project.... I was contrasting those who create new projects against those who maintain existing, established projects.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[GodGell]

the thing is, the Mozilla community both maintains its projects and creates new ones. mind you, they have 75 million members.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[sumdumass]

Growth in this case would be measured in necessity, And how they create that neccesity.

I know that sound wierd or different then what it should mean but if microsoft intends to keep ~90% of all desktops, it needs to create a "need" past a desire or default for thier products. Thier growth would be in servers and services as well a specific tecnoligy that they alone could control.

This is one of the reasons people are so scared about DRM and trusted computing. It isn't so much that it might lock out other operating systems and possibly other companies programs as much as it is that you would be forced to pay tribute to microsoft in order to experience what you can today. This might not be exactly monetary either. It may be offered free if you have purchased some other product wich actualy makes it cost but people won't look at it that way.

Right now microsoft is were it is because of it's marketing. Good or bad, thier tactics worked sufficiently enough to remove enough of the competition to get were they are. Once the competition is replaced, this marketing will have less of an impact and they will (could) retain thier shares by making it neccesary to use thier "new products" in order to retain the uses your already used to. This might be a lateral move on the surface but has the potential to slap fees well in excess of what we are used to today. I can see a time were you have to suscribe to the OS and pay a yearly or even monthly royalty in some situations. There won't really be a choice unless microsoft continues in thier current path. Growth is the only option for them.

Other wise they might fall to the wayside like apple or IBM when they had a dominant operating system.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just bizarre, talking down at Inkscape when it's at version .42. It's not as slick as Illustrator yet, but what do you expect? Are you this nice in person, too? Wow.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Anonymous Coward]

Eye-bleed material like this isn't supposed to show up at +5. Quite the bundle of self-contradiction, arrogance, and idiocy (if not out-right trolling).

Microsoft's role shouldn't be in improving the OS,

What?

it should be in creating the infrastructure necessary to allow the umpteen-zillion Windows developers out there to improve the OS instead.

And I'm sure they're all qualified.

What Microsoft should do is open up their software, and invest their money in more programmers, but not to do coding, to act as support for the rest of us who do the coding.

Maybe if you wanted to cause a mass exodus of devs. Oh, and again you've insinuated that the masses are inherently more qualified for positions MS has explicitly filled.

Sourceforge is littered with the remains of OSS projects that were fun to code and get working, but that nobody wants to maintain anymore.

So who maintains MS's shitworx projects now that all MS does is provide "support" for the "real" coders?

Sometimes it seems as if half the listings there are for build engineers.

It's not a rewarding job (having been a build engineer [not at MS]). As I advanced from entry-dev and proved to be more valuable doing non -build stuff, we went through 3 build engineers before finding one that stuck.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[zygote]

That's exactly why he's suggesting that they assign their most experienced engineers -- the ones who know best how the applications fit together and how all the little pieces interact -- to oversee the process of approving and applying those patches.

Even that, apparently, wouldn't help!

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/28/183823 5&tid=201

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Anonymous Coward]

oooohhh, "esteem" Can I pay my mortgage w/ that?

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Gordonjcp]

Yuo nead too chekc yuor speling

Re:Wrong emphasis

[skiflyer]

Yeah, an article saying they're not growing fast enough to keep Wall Street happy... BFD! They have a huge market share, and are still growing! So that shows their ideology as antiquated or obselete?! Are you kidding? Linux/*BSD is pecking them to death, are you kidding? Windows 2003 showed their first serious entry into the server market, and who knows what's next, proprietary IS working for them, whatever the benefits of OSS (and for the record, I think they're many) proprietary is working for the MS bottom line even if it's not always working to the benefit of the end users.

Do they keep making money, yes, do they keep growing yes, do they run the risk of being beat in certain segments, possibly... do the answers to those questions necessitate a DRASTIC change in company philosophy... give me a break, your ideology is clearly clouding your views... I'm glad the grass is so green on your side, but you really need to take a more realistic view of the landscape.

So if they're lucky, their stock price stays where it is

So tell me, if they switch to an OSS model, what's the "if they're lucky" and "if they're unlucky" options? Hmmm, perhaps "if they're lucky" they remain relevant and their stock drops 50%, and "if they're unlucky" they lose huge percentages (10-15 is HUGE in this context, 25-30 is uncomphrensible) and their stock becomes worthless.

Seriously, slashdot is full of people who are optimists, and full of people with some phenomenal ideas as alternates to Windows, as competition, as different business models, as great things microsoft should adopt, as a whole lot of things... but the people supporting this article are just being ridiculous, you're putting MS in a funk which doesn't exist, and suggesting a solution which doesn't address the actualy problems and at the same time undercutting the biggest routes of success it has.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[skiflyer]

I hope you're right... I love sourceforge, but the real kicker about it to me is the amount of cruft, for every cool, neat or useful project, I find 4 useless ones... for every 10th wow i won't that project, 1 is dead and not supported, doesn't run, has no support, etc.

I absolutely LOVE the idea behind sourceforge, I wish I had the time and skills to help with projects there... but the one thing I wish they had was a better frontend to the projects... even putting projects without current releases or without active user contact or without whatever it takes to be a success one level behind the projects which just fucking rock would be a big step.... if I type in sourceforge.net I want to see some cool programs right away and in my face, the stuff that's supported actively, is cross platform, and has steam both behind it and in its future... things like GAIM and GIMP and Inkscape.

I know this isn't sourceforge's goal right now, and perhaps it never should be, I just know I'd like such an interface to all those projects.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody needs a nap.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[mmport80]

Even if MS open sourced their OS or adopted Linux, the openoffice.org people will eventually create a a competitive office suite and MS would be faced with the same dilemma, and so on.

MS have no choice but to draw a line in the sand, and stop the open source "virus".

Re:Wrong emphasis

[ezavada]

Mod me flame-bait if you like. I'm not ignorant enough to get modded "interesting". ... and yet you were modded "interesting" twice. Odd that.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[tverbeek]

Mozilla predates Internet Explorer by quite a large margin.

How's that? The current Mozilla browsers can trace their lineage back to Mosaic Netscape, but IE can trace its development lineage back to Spyglass Mosaic. Both were launched as clones of NCSA Mosaic at about the same time, in the early 1990s.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[kmeister62]

Actually MS is looking at changing their business plan. They're starting to see revenue drying up in various areas. They are now getting into the Services arena. They plan on offiering a suite of services for customers. to install their software on servers, etc. But, oh we're not going to screw our partners in the process. They can user our service offerings and provide "value add".

Re:Wrong emphasis

[WilliamSChips]

Firefox doesn't. Neither does Thunderbird.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[DickBreath]

Make it so that if I find a bug, all I have to do is fix it and submit a patch. That's it. Nothing more. Nothing less.

There is one thing more. How much should I have to pay Microsoft for them to accept my patch? Ideally, they would accept it without any payment from me.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Anonymous Coward]

No, what's bizarre is talking up Inkscape, when according to a knowledgable user, it doesn't work very well.

Since when is there a law that only nice things can be said about OSS-level beta software? If anything, you just made the OP's point about sourceforge shovelware.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Anonymous Coward]

So then beta testing is "free QA slave labor" by your definition?

Re:Wrong emphasis

[croddy]

you modded me up for explaining what the GP post was saying? what?

if i get this in metamod, you can bet i'm marking it unfair!

Re:Wrong emphasis

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft, through monopoly, has established themselves as the de-facto Operating systems standards body. Linux is a competing standard to windows like Fyrewyre is a competing standard to USB.

MS makes tons of money off of this. Infact, that's their entire reason for being in business is that, right there; their monopoly on the standard through patents and copyright.

Linux is more modifyable and therefor, adaptable and less expensive than MS's products but MS's products are far more inexpensive. If they became merely a standards body it would benefit the computer industry immensly. Infact if they did that I'd say the monopoly was worth it initially over the disadvantage of having a ton of expensive, buggy OS's fighting over the market.

However, as of late microsofts operating systems have been stagnating. When was the last time they really renovted their operating system to something radically new and better? Win NT 4? Win9x? Arguebly Win2k was the last time. Linux is advancing at a snales pace but microsoft is advancing at the pace of a protazoa.

Their standard is in disrepair and I think the company is having major leadership issues. Frankly, I think from their inability to produce stable, decent code that is innovative reflects their unwillingness to change their operating system to make it more useful or open. I really think microsoft is debating becoming a media monopoly and cooperating with the NWO like no other company can through DRM and buying up major news corps (they've got the war chest) but I think Bill is questioning both the morality and the ability to do that with linux being incharge of most web services. I think the man, for all the money he has gotten himself and his impeccable business interests, hates the idea of a NWO and doesn't want his company to participate in that kind of thing. He does have a political theory very different than you or I do but deep down I think the man isn't batshit insane.

So will they open up the standard? We'll see where linux goes. If MS's standard keeps on stagnating then people will switch to linux and MS has a real economic reason for getting their asses in gear or opening up.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[mpe]

Sourceforge is littered with the remains of OSS projects that were fun to code and get working, but that nobody wants to maintain anymore.

There's plenty of similar proprietary software projects. Just that there isn't any kind of central repository for them.

Re:Wrong emphasis

[ghostrider13]

Even if MS could keep itself profitable in the OSS world (which is still a big question) There is no way you can service OS effectively in this manner. Make it so that if I find a bug, all I have to do is fix it and submit a patch. That's it. Nothing more. Nothing less. So you submit a patch... But before you've submitted it did you spend a couple of weeks testing it to make sure that it fixes all the variations of a problem? Or that it doesn't break something else? Or something else in the component that relies on the one that you've just fixed? Maybe you could post your concerns to the furum related to this component but the one guy who really understands it is between jobs or has his university finals and just doesn't have the resources at the moment... Now suppose you even took care of all mentioned above and eventually the source file accumulated 10 patches from 10 different people. Would they all have same coding standards? Would they all be available some time later is a question arose about something they wrote? Servicing is a tough and neccesery process. No corporation in it's right mind would use a software without some kind of servicing. Even in the cases of OSS they rely on someone like RedHat to do it. And look at the bug turnaround times: they are 3-4 times longer for RedHat than for Microsoft... You can open-source development but I'm yet to see open-source software servicing... Don't get me wrong - I like OSS and use it myself a lot but while it's ok to use it for my personal tasks on my home PC I doubt that I'll board and airplane with OSS firmware... :)

Flawed logic

[A nonymous Coward]

I believe what he is suggesting is that Microsoft spend a billion bucks and a year to embrace and extend Linux, starting from some existing distribution. Then when they release their flood of changes in a year, under the GPL, no one will be able to catch up because of that billion buck one year lead.

But that one year lag works the other way too. Microsoft would then be a year behind the open source baseline with which they started.

If they kept merging mainline changes into their internal codeset during that year of secret development, it would no longer have a year's worth of changes in it, it would only have enhancements, which would be a lot easier to pick and choose from for the rest of the world to merge back into the mainline.

If Microsoft kept their baseline "pure", they would be behind the world as much as the world would be behind them. If they kept their internal codeset up to date, they would not be a year ahead.

Wham! Paradox City Arizona, baby.

Re:Flawed logic

[Baddas]

I think there's a flaw to your logic: Forks.

Forked projects occasionally, though not always, end up viable alternatives.

Look at X.org, look at the three different BSDs (De Raadt's recoding of things for security) and so forth.

If Microsoft took the traditional route of forking a fairly recent version of the stable codebase, they'd have a decent chance of being able to actually sell something.

Re:Flawed logic

[Anonymous Coward]

MS Windows is already forked...

Re:Flawed logic

[Tim C]

If they kept merging mainline changes into their internal codeset during that year of secret development, it would no longer have a year's worth of changes in it, it would only have enhancements

Well, that really depends on what they were working on. Entirely new functionality is still entirely new functionality whether you've applied other changes to other parts of the distro or not.

Also, if I was going to do this, I'd pick on a single distro and essentially fork it. How many releases does the averge distro make in a year? One? That's not a huge difference, and the biggest difference between distro releases is usually the kernel, KDE and gnome versions plus some distro-specific tools which are often not GPLed anyway (and so useless to me in this hypothetical situation).

Re:Flawed logic

[Anonymous Coward]

"I believe what he is suggesting is that Microsoft spend a billion bucks and a year to embrace and extend Linux, starting from some existing distribution. Then when they release their flood of changes in a year, under the GPL, no one will be able to catch up because of that billion buck one year lead."

Just like Webkit vs KHTML?

Summary.

[gardyloo]

turning it into the world's best operating system.' Could this ever happen?

      Doubtful. Ask again later.

Re:Summary.

[rayde]

i thought this whole scenario was basically already played out in Mac OS X... i mean, not exactly with all the details of TFA, but relatively closely. A big company took an open source product, kinda created their own fork, gives a bit back to the community, and the geeks embrace it. many would call it "the world's best operating system" already.

but hey, it'd be nice if Microsoft did it too. I like UNIX ;-)

Re:Summary.

[SA Stevens]

What 'open source product' did Apple take in? They were acquired by (or they acquired, depends on how you look at it) NeXT, who had a closed-source operating system. They essentially 'open sourced' big chunks of it, enough to run a 'bare UNIX-like OS' which has been called Darwin. As part of making it a bare UNIX-like OS that would be USABLE they grafted on a FreeBSD derived userland.

In no sense of the word did they 'take an open source product' and kinda create their own fork. Unless you can tell me where to download NeXT's Source Code. I wouldn't mind having NextStep/OpenStep to run on some of the various hardware (PA-RISC, Sparc, Intel, etc.) hardware I have around here. . . It's not freely available by any means except the warez route. Certainly the source code is not available.

Re:Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Asking again.

Re:Summary.

[jamstar7]

What Microsoft has is some of the world's brightest programmers working for it. Coding skills isn't Microsoft's downfall, it's the marketting wanks who keep insisting on releasing stuff that isn't ready for prime time. Microsoft is market-driven, and what markets need is product, preferably as much and as often as possible. By getting the world locked into betatesting everything they make at a hefty price, the marketting wanks at Microsoft made billions.

The product, though, from an engineering viewpoint, still needs work. If Microsoft was run by the engineers, it could do great things. Problem with that is, it wouldn't generate nearly as much product...

Re:Summary.

[gardyloo]

Asking again.

  Outlook hazy.

Re:Summary.

[HiThere]

Try BSD.

Apple took in BSD code, and using it created Darwin (which is, again, open source...so they did give something back).

OSX is partially based on BSD. I don't know how much, not only am I no expert on BSD Unix, I'm also no expert on Apple Darwin. But they did. And it's the underpinnings of the Mac OSX. And it's FOSS. The stuff they put on top of Darwin to make it friendly to use, that's proprietary, but don't think that Apple hasn't given back. They may not have given back what some people want, but they have given back.

Re:Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it too much to ask you to read the comment to which you replied?

Re:Summary.

[jez9999]

What Microsoft has is some of the world's brightest programmers working for it.
Frankly, after looking at the latest release of IE7, one starts to wonder even about that.

Re:Summary.

[TheRaven64]

In no sense of the word did they 'take an open source product' and kinda create their own fork

Yes they did. Back when they were called NeXT, they took 4.2BSD and Mach 2.0 (later Mach 2.5), forked it and put a proprietary UI on top of it.

When they became Apple, they replaced a lot of the 4.2BSD stuff with FreeBSD code (and some from NetBSD back in the Rhapsody era).

Of course, this process happened back in 1988, so it's only news by Slashdot's standards, but it did happen.

Re:Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

"What 'open source product' did Apple take in? [...] In no sense of the word did they 'take an open source product' and kinda create their own fork"

KHTML?

Re:Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like UNIX ;-)

I like complete girls myself.

Re:Summary.

[cahiha]

In no sense of the word did they 'take an open source product' and kinda create their own fork. Unless you can tell me where to download NeXT's Source Code.

NeXT is a fork of Mach, BSD UNIX, and GNU (including the GNU compiler).

Note that the remaining technology also didn't come from Apple or NeXT: Objective-C came from Stepstone, Postscript came from Adobe, and the NeXTStep library design came from Xerox.

Re:Summary.

[cahiha]

big company took an open source product, kinda created their own fork

True.

gives a bit back to the community and the geeks embrace it.

Care to list some Apple contributions to the open source community that are actually widely used on platforms other than Macintosh? I can't think of any. I'm pretty sure none of my Linux machines have any significant Apple-sponsored open source software on them.

Re:Summary.

[HiThere]

You might, perhaps, have heard of *BSD? I don't know which BSD Apple based their designs on, but they are ALL Free Software. They may not be GPL, but they ARE Free Software projects.

Is it too much to ask YOU to read the grandparent which you are criticising the parent for not having read?

Re:Summary.

[mattyrobinson69]

apple recently opened up their cvs repository of webcore (khtml), which the khtml developers used to merge in many of apples changes.

(i know they were only doing a bit more than the gpl requires, and i do know they used khtml as a basis of webcore)

Re:Summary.

[cahiha]

apple recently opened up their cvs repository of webcore (khtml), which the khtml developers used to merge in many of apples changes.

Ah, yes: khtml is an excellent example of Apple's attitudes towards open source--and why they are not to be trusted.

Re:Summary.

[mattyrobinson69]

as per the GPL, they have to make their changes available (which does not include changelogs, or small patches), so they _were_ giving huge unmergable patches to the khtml team

recently they opened their cvs tree and afaik got a couple of developers to help the khtml team merge the code (although i may be wrong with that)

If Microsoft went open source..

[Anonymous Coward]

I would get laid..

never happening..

Re:If Microsoft went open source..

[tloh]

If Microsoft went open source..

I would get laid..

never happening..

Nothing ventured nothing gained...
...That goes for both of you.

Re:If Microsoft went open source..

[bersl2]

Nothing perceived contingent, nothing ventured.

But I suppose that's only the case with very few of us.

Re:If Microsoft went open source..

[Anonymous Coward]

Comments bursting from the audience...

          "Jesus, I wish I could get laid."
          "Mee too!"
          "Tell me about it."
          "Yea, I'm in that boat."
          "Last time I was with a... wait."
          "You too? I thought I was the only one." ...more mumbling...and from the back room...

          "Awww shutup!" (Warner Bros Cartoons Emphasis)

Re:If Microsoft went open source..

[SleepyHappyDoc]

I would get laid..

Yeah, by Bill Gates.

"Could this ever happen?"

[LowbrowDeluxe]

Well...sure! If I ever see a large order for hand-knit sweaters for damned souls I'll start expecting it.

Re:"Could this ever happen?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer said "Mark my words - if Microsoft ever goes open source, I'll do some insane screaming monkey dance in public. Never happen."

Ooooh!

[dasunt]

While we are wishing, I want a money tree in the back yard that sheds $100 bills.

And world peace.

And a pony!

Re:Ooooh!

[mr_tenor]

While we are wishing, I want a money tree in the back yard that sheds $100 bills.

And world peace.

And a pony!

No, you can't have a pony

Re:Ooooh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Attributed to Goethe (he's that German guy):

"Wanted: A dog that eats glass and shits diamonds."

Re:Ooooh!

[Seumas]

While we are wishing, I want a money tree in the back yard that sheds $100 bills.

Your wife charges you $100?!

Re:Ooooh!

[NanoGator]

"While we are wishing, I want a money tree in the back yard that sheds $100 bills.

And world peace.

And a pony!"

If I were posting a fantasy about being a rich guy with a pony and no law enforcement, I'd post it anonymously.

Re:Ooooh!

[arkhan_jg]

Wouldn't the pony eat the $100 bills growing on the tree?

Or we talking about some big-ass money tree that it can't reach?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Re:Ooooh!

[Chiisu]

And a pony!

Now you're being ridiculous....

Re:Ooooh!

[KillerDeathRobot]

You think you're getting a pony after what you did to the last one??

Not a chance

[jlrowe]

Microsoft is based not on software, but on *control*.

Control of suppliers, control of customers, control of employees, control of what competitors are left.

To go OSS would be a complete 180 in personality, and that is just not going to happen.

Re:Not a chance

[siphoncolder]

Oh don't be so dramatic.

It's based on money. Control ensures money - that's the bottom line. Literally.

Re:Not a chance

[suitepotato]

Microsoft IS most definitely based on software, they know it and work it, and do it very well. Why are so many on /. unwilling to give them credit where it is due? Through acquisition of skilled individuals and small outfits with good IP and talented people, and leveraging of everything they've put together, they've managed to kick the royal sh*t out of IBM, Oracle, Novell, Netscape, and a long laundry list of other would-be Micrsoft-killers.

OSS has zip to do with nobility or anything else associated with good. It's rapidly being brought low to the same level as drug abuse due to peer pressure. Better go open source or you'll be seen in the same light as Microsoft. Open source to be cool and hip and accepted.

Horsesh*t. Microsoft spent real money, invested real resources, why should they not keep their source closed if they so choose? It's their right to do, as it is theirs. You want to open source your stuff, do what you want with your stuff. You want to close source it, who cares, its yours.

I am so sick of this tinfoil hat FUD about Microsoft. Their chief crimes are simple: they sold unfinished, alpha, and beta software as finished product and downplayed the results despite voluminous documention by support professionals and by virtue of the sheer number of patches needed to stabilize it afterwards; their second crime is to abuse the patent system while claiming to desire an end to the same behavior. Lastly, they tend to get overprotective of their market and cross the line in proper and ethical sales and marketing practices.

But enough is enough with the "MS is teh enemy" nonsense. Windows XP isn't remotely the mess that Windows 3.11 and DOS 6.22, Windows 95 first release or Windows ME were. You want to go after them for what they really do? Fine, document it, prove it, make the case. Don't have one? Drop it until you do people. If MS continues to be villified for being something they aren't and doing things they haven't, sooner or later they will and though it may soothe the hearts of a lot of pathetic geeks to see them become guilty after the fact, it won't help anyone. Not the market, not the industry, not the customers, not the world.

So let's think before we paint them so darkly automatically.

Re:Not a chance

[Mahlon]

Of course it's based on money! Duh. I make my living being employed to write software using Microsoft tools and have been for the last decade. I am certainly not going to bite off the hand that feeds me and throw it all away.

And...they ARE coming out with some interesting tools with their Visual Studio Team System 2005.

PS: Is my user ID small enough?

Re:Not a chance

[Noehre]

> PS: Is my user ID small enough?

No. Never small enough!

Re:Not a chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Control of suppliers, control of customers, control of employees, control of what competitors are left.

Tis true, billy bathgates balls would probably explode without his routine forced discharges into the unwilling, and unknowing.

Re:Not a chance

[Anonymous Coward]

I think M$ will go open source. But (unlike the article) I don't think they'll do it by embracing and extending linux. By the way, the author forgot the third leg of the tripod: extinguish.

I think M$ will open-source Windows. The base system, that is, not necessarily libraries and very likely not applications. They will open-source Windows because they learned that it is not possible to defeat Linux. It can't be bought out. It can't be stopped. But when they open-source Windows, a lot of development talent will flow from Linux to Windows. One of the selling points of linux will be extinguished.

Open-sourcing Windows will ensure that Windows becomes entrenched as the dominant operating system forever. I hope to hell Microsoft doesn't do it.

Re:Not a chance

[vmfedor]

*claps*

Damn my lack of mod points!

Re:Not a chance

[Panaflex]

Hey Tonto, ever heard of a supposition? It's just a trip down the yellow brick road here, not a "Bow before the Penguins, or we send in the Demons" threat.

I won't dispute than XP is a quality product. I still prefer Linux, mostly for the superior kernel , real software packaging, and server environment.

That said, I am a big fan of VC++. I do prefer OpenOffice 2.0 as of now.. stability and a few outlining bugs will have it cinched for me.

In the end, I don't see either Linux or Windows doing much but converging in market. Linux will take some desktop once a decent IDE gets COMPLETED, and Windows will take some server as stability and security have improved, and the visual studio toolset will simplify web application design and development.

I think Java server market share will slowly collapse unless tech like Struts gets easier to use in medium to big developments.(Yeah, been there, done that) Hell, it only took a couple of years to transition from Perl to Java. Who knows what comes next?

Anyway, the point is that we don't know jack about what's going to happen, and isn't it just fun to suppose anyway?

Have fun.

Re:Not a chance

[aralin]

I agree there is no chance and this is not the only reason. The way to make money out of GPL software is to provide a great service to come with it that nobody else could provide. Now tell me seriously, would you purchase suppoort from Microsoft? Would you pay them to make security fixes for your software? Ehh.... I don't think so. Different company, with different name and reputation, maybe, but not Microsoft.

Re:Not a chance

[Lonewolf666]

You and grandparent are both halfway right:
Microsoft certainly has some good software, but they also are "overprotective of their market" to the point where they tend to use illegal methods. That is where grandparent has a point.
And that overprotectiveness makes it very unlikely that we will ever see a GPLed Open Source Windows. Because it would make it much easier to compete in the market for operating systems that can run Windows applications. To be more specific:
-The Wine project would make rapid progress. Partly by copying code, partly by the availability of the source code to study (in areas where direct copying does not help them).
-Soon every Linux distribution, and maybe BSD too, would come with the ability to run almost any Windows application.

Re:Not a chance

[Anonymous Coward]

There are other ways both to make money and retain a degree of control. Source code is only a portion of what constitutes a large, complex piece of software such as Windows. It must also include significant amounts of text for dialogs, menus, tutorials, help, etc.; graphics in the form of icons, bitmaps, and animations.; sounds to give audible feedback; dialog layouts; and various other elements that can be easily copyrighted separately from the source itself.

MS would of course freely license such separately copyrighted elements to people who are making mods to the source that they "give back" to MS. Those writing derivative products would however need to either pay royalties for them (and said royalties would be priced in such a way that MS would earn as much from them as they do for a copy of Windows today), or craft their own versions which must be notably different from the MS ones. Obviously, this would not only require a lot of work, but also result in something that, while functionally equivalent to the MS original, has a "look and feel" that is distinctly different from the one that existing users are accustomed to.

So MS could easily release much of Windows' code base as open source without losing all their current lock-in and control by the simple expedient of separately licensing all the other media that contribute to what users see and the way they interact with the system. Such a strategy will become even more viable when technologies like Avalon remove many visual elements from the source code into easily-copyrighted separate XML files, thereby making raw source even less useful to potential producers of third-party derivatives.

With the above in mind, I suggest that MS would have much to gain from open-sourcing Windows itself (but not for example the Office suite). They would benefit from the "many eyes" approach to detecting and fixing security flaws and other bugs; other people would do most of the work porting things like Windows-CE to various processors and machine architectures; and last but not least, they'd have "me too" bragging rights to combat one of the FOSS-lobby's main criticisms of Microsoft. All this while still maintaning control over what most people think of as "Windows", i.e. the stuff that people actually see when they use it!

Re:Not a chance

[NickFortune]

Microsoft IS most definitely based on software, they know it and work it, and do it very well. Why are so many on /. unwilling to give them credit where it is due?

That's an interesting question, really. There's no doubt that MS made a policy of hiring the very best, and we can reasonably assume that they have some quality coding going on in house.

And yet there is considerable perceived suckage in the Microsoft codebase. Ans so a lot of people ask "if so many people dislike this product, why does it remain dominant?"

Good marketing seems a plausible answer. Certainly, Microsoft are extremely good at marketing. Arguably their marketing skills are superior to their coding skills, notwithstading their having a shipload of talent available in the coding department.

And this in turn leads many to characterise MS main business as marketing. It seems to be what they do best. Of course, to describe them as a marking company is an oversimplification, but it is still a useful analysis in terms of the insight it yeilds into the software giant's behaviour.

To consider their behavior in terms of control, while perhaps harder to defend, is similarly interesting. Certain MS activities make no sense in terms of providing what thewir customers want, but make perfect sense if you consider them as control freaks. Their determination to inflict DRM upon their userbase springs to mind here for some reason.

OSS has zip to do with nobility or anything else associated with good. It's rapidly being brought low to the same level as drug abuse due to peer pressure. Better go open source or you'll be seen in the same light as Microsoft. Open source to be cool and hip and accepted.

You reckon? I don't recognise that characterisation at all. Copyleft software creates a commonwealth that enriches us all. Many contribute simply for that reason. Of course, OSS coders are a diverse bunch and each of us probably has a their own unique set of reasons for contributing. Unlike Microsoft, the closet we come to having a corporate agenda is the GPL. And that, I think you'll grant, is a fairly altruistic document.

There is of course the pressure some people are directing at Sun to release Java to the community. Personally I think that would be a good move for Java, but I will conceed that it is Sun's decision. But even if the rhetoric has gone over the top in the course of that particular debate, it's hardly fair to attempt to characterise the entire community in terms of that one discussion.

Oh, and I can't see the drug use connection at all. I'd love for you to explain that one.

Microsoft spent real money, invested real resources, why should they not keep their source closed if they so choose? It's their right to do, as it is theirs.

Just to be clear, I do not dispute this. In fact I don't think anyone disputes this, although a few people belive MS might be better served by going open source. I belive they are entitled to their opinions, just as MS are entitled to ignore them.

I am so sick of this tinfoil hat FUD about Microsoft. Their chief crimes are simple: they sold unfinished, alpha, and beta software as finished product and downplayed the results despite voluminous documention by support professionals and by virtue of the sheer number of patches needed to stabilize it afterwards; their second crime is to abuse the patent system while claiming to desire an end to the same behavior. Lastly, they tend to get overprotective of their market and cross the line in proper and ethical sales and marketing practices.

Is that all? I thought they'd done something bad! ;)

Seriously, add to the list that they are also rather scathing in denigrating their opponents, and have a vicious line of FUD themselves. Which would not be so bad if their own offerings represented the pinacle of software development depicted in MS ad campaigns.

As it is, you can expect folks to be a bit

Re:Not a chance

[argent]

It's based on money.

If it was based on money, Microsoft would already have followed IBM's model and diversified, or even voluntarily split up into separate companies under an umbrella group, rather than crippling almost everything they've produced to make it part of the support structure for Windows.

Instead, they remind me more of DEC in the VAX era, "all the wood behind one arrow". We've seen how well the strategy of organizing a company around one single product line works out.

Re:Not a chance

[hypnotik]

Damn straight.

Re:Not a chance

[mpe]

I think M$ will open-source Windows. The base system, that is, not necessarily libraries and very likely not applications. They will open-source Windows because they learned that it is not possible to defeat Linux. It can't be bought out. It can't be stopped. But when they open-source Windows, a lot of development talent will flow from Linux to Windows. One of the selling points of linux will be extinguished.

Open sourcing previously proprietary programs is not always easy. Not only does the source tend to be in a poor format there is also the issue of having to check for anything which might have been "accidentally" pirated.

Open-sourcing Windows will ensure that Windows becomes entrenched as the dominant operating system forever.

Actually it would be a big risk to Microsoft. Not only would there be possible lawsuits, if what they released wasn't in a fit state to be built it could be cherry picked for WINE.

Could this ever happen?

[Rick Zeman]

No. Less return to the stockholders (not that they get many dividends anyway....)

In a word, no

[bgfay]

This could not happen. From everything I've read, Bill Gates doesn't work this way and isn't concerned about that kind of immortality.

There is nothing in the history of him or his company to suggest that this is possible.

And, frankly, it's not necessary.

Re:In a word, no

[TapeCutter]

I once read, (many years ago), how Bill was going to give everything away when he was 45(?). I know he gives large sums to charity but I haven't heard much about him giving it ALL away since he got married.

Re:In a word, no

[transwarp]

From everything I've read, Bill Gates doesn't work this way and isn't concerned about that kind of immortality.

That's a good thing. We won't have a chance to see real advancements and fresh ideas until when/if MS and Windows dies out, and Windows' backwards-compatibility ends.

Re:In a word, no

[hungrygrue]

Let's immagine for a second that every executive at microsoft were suddenly hypnotized or something and decided to GPL the Windows operating system. The Wine project would benefit, obviously, which means that legacy Windows applications could run seamlessly on Linux. But what would be the point of trying to improve the Windows operating system itself?? If you tried to implement and inforce good security you would break backwards compatibility. POSIX support could be added, but why bother when you can just run any needed Windows apps under Linux instead? Honestly I don't see that there would be any further use for the Windows operating system itself, at least as a stand alone OS, only the Windows API which would simply be incorporated into Wine. Open sourcing Windows would be the end of Windows as an OS.

Re:In a word, no

[Anonymous Coward]

So when people write articles on wanting MS to go open source, what they really want is for linux to have 100% compatibility, for Micro$oft to go out of business and no one use Windows again, ever.

Yeah, sign me up for that pony, I want one that shits diamonds.

Re:In a word, no

[Ythan]

Actually, Microsoft is trying to implement and enforce good security in Windows Vista, and it sounds like they are taking some effective steps to minimize the effect on legacy apps.

Short answer?

[ruiner13]

No.

Long answer?

No f'n way.

There, settled.

It's pretty simple

[mr_tenor]

Free Software (and Open Source I guess) is about cooperation and working together.

Proprietary software is about not cooperating, and many big businesses seem to be about destroying anything which gets in the way of their profit or control.

Microsoft can't "go open source" until it collectively believes that cooperation is a good idea and stops trying to destroy or control everything. And I'm guessing that won't happen any time soon.

Re:It's pretty simple

[TapeCutter]

Bussiness is by definition about people cooperating with each other to make a living, it is normally considered bad bussiness to cooperate with one's competitors. In some cases (eg:price fixing), it is actually illegal.

I'm sure that if you cooperated with MS, (ie:paid them $hitloads), they in turn would cooperate with you.

Joke?

[raw19896]

You're joking right? Microsoft and world's best operating system in the same sentence. HA!

Re:Joke?

[computerdude33]

Really? Microsoft does not make the world's best operating system. There. HAHAHAH! (this is less exciting than I originally thought)

Re:Joke?

[rbarreira]

They've been much farther... Which may or may not mean anything :)

shya

[Wordsmith]

Shya. And some dude screaming "developers" might fly out of my butt.

Re:shya

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds incredibly painful. Please videotape it and post it on the web when or if it happens.

Re:shya

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have one big butt :)

Re:shya

[Anonymous Coward]

this quality joke just made me add you on my positive user list. Keep up references for you next ones!

If Microsoft Went Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

Never been into "fantasy".

Bill Gates

[Anonymous Coward]

So long as I would own all the patents for the new code. Next question?

Next

[AaronStJ]

Could this ever happen?

No. Next question.

Re:Next

[William Robinson]

Will Slashdot post dupe of this?:)

Re:Next

[TCM]

Will Slashdot post dupe of this?:)

Yes. Next question.

Re:Next

[superpulpsicle]

Is this technically a M$ advertisement?

Yes. Next question.

Speculative article != news article

[RootsLINUX]

Honestly, I'm wondering why this is on Slashdot. I come here to read news, not some editorial guesses at what might be news in the future. "News for Nerd. Stuff that matters." ===> and this article doesn't matter...

Re:Speculative article != news article

[Anonymous Coward]

"News for Nerd. Stuff that matters" is short at the expense of accuracy. If you can find a 4-letter word that means "news and speculations", then maybe Slashdot will switch to it. Until then, don't bother complaining, you don't have a case.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[Jeff DeMaagd]

and this article doesn't matter...

In truth, not a whole lot of the articles posted on slashdot really matter. Why I keep coming here is a mystery, maybe I should form a slash-anon.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[The Bubble]

I think the news is that there are still people out there that are this oblivious to the marketing practices of Microsoft.

At least, that's what I've decided to tell myself.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[AEton]

This isn't a speculative article. It's a quiet attempt by Microsoft to gauge the community's reaction to a possible open source product.

Recently I was paid $10 to take a survey geared towards IT professionals about "current trends within the Software and PC Industry". The questions were clearly written by Microsoft, and one possible plan was obvious:

-Microsoft will compose a list of dozens of software patents allegedly violated by Linux and will offer total indemnification for Red Hat users only. If necessary, it will use its own patent portfolio as leverage.
-Microsoft will strengthen Red Hat's source offerings to emphasize "interoperability", which means that it will be possible to administer a RH install from Windows.
-Microsoft will buy Red Hat for considerably more than it seems to be worth and will immediately cripple it just as it's crippled every other worthy competitor it has bought out.

This is a clever plan to defeat Linux.

(Part of the survey really bugged me because it seemed like a push poll - see here.)

Re:Speculative article != news article

[wilsoniya]

M$ going open source? It could be news. You'd hear about it in the same broadcast that you hear "Gerald Ford dead today, after a fireball destroys France..."

Re:Speculative article != news article

[inkfox]

You're paranoid, delusional, and probably on drugs. Microsoft recognizes the linux fad, which is already fading.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[IntlHarvester]

This is just another variation of the "MS Linux" conspiracy theory. Even though it's a pretty retarded hypothesis, it's been a Slashdot and Linux Zealot mainstay for years. The baseless assumption is that the Windows kernel is so technically flawed that only Linux could save the OS.

Just on a technical level, it would be much easier for MS to put a Linux/Unix-compatibility layer on top of Windows (and they already have to a certain extent), rather than attempt to run all of the Windows infrastructure on top of Linux.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[slashdotnickname]

I come here to read news, not some editorial guesses at what might be news in the future

You must not come here often!

There are plenty of tech sites out there if you just want news, and most deliver fresher right-off-the-presses news. But here you get news, editorials, book reviews, interviews, and tons of sometimes funny, sometimes insightful member commentary.

so why settle for vanilla, when you can get it and more in the neopolitan that is /.?

Re:Speculative article != news article

[l33t.g33k]

I come here to read news

Slashdot has news on it? Are you sure? Oh wait a minute...

Re:Speculative article != news article

[Ravatar]

Sure, news about stuff like linux, google, ..linux...

Re:Speculative article != news article

[1u3hr]

Just on a technical level, it would be much easier for MS to put a Linux/Unix-compatibility layer on top of Windows (and they already have to a certain extent), rather than attempt to run all of the Windows infrastructure on top of Linux.

If they stripped out all the cruft kept for compatibility with ancient software; and changed the policy of entangling non-essential components deep in the system, that could make a solid OS. Something like OSX. Jobs has never been afraid of pulling the rug out as far as backward compatibility goes, which causes short term pain and a lot of bitching, but a much better system in the end.

Some people have manged to do a lot of this independently; eg LitePC, and several projects at MSFN like nLite.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[Bush Pig]

"Hi. My name's Dave. I'm a slashaholic. It's been 15 minutes since I last posted on /."

Re:Speculative article != news article

[vga_init]

-Microsoft will strengthen Red Hat's source offerings to emphasize "interoperability", which means that it will be possible to administer a RH install from Windows.

Putty, yo.

It sounds like just the sort of thing that Microsoft would do, though. They could make a nice GUI application to administer multiple machines at once with the click of a mouse, maybe have it manage a mix of Windows and linux. That might be cool. Dirty, but cool.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[HiThere]

OK. I'll give it a moderate degree of trust if all of the basic systems are GPL. Including all services that start must automatically. It's true that this is MS making the offer, so it would need to be QUITE convincing, as I don't trust them to not sneak a fishhook into proffered code.

E.g., they must warrant that they have rights to all of the code that they are offering. And the warranty must be clear, understandable, readable BEFORE purchase, and not subject to changes after the purchase. (I presume that this gives you a hint as to how much I trust them. The actual conditions would probably be a bit more stringent...and include being vetted by more than one lawyer.)

Re:Speculative article != news article

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a clever plan to defeat Linux. I knew it!

Re:Speculative article != news article

[TodPunk]

And if the weren't going for this, /. just handed them a nice strategy that their budget could quite possibly pull off.

Either way, we lose =c(

Re:Speculative article != news article

[CorpDrone_1001001]

Microsoft will buy Red Hat for considerably more than it seems to be worth and will immediately cripple it just as it's crippled every other worthy competitor it has bought out

Yes indeed, my mission statement will incorporate most of this. I've got my helmet and my empty wallet all set. Now about this "worthy competitor" thing...can I skip this step and just sell my soul? Seems that's the quickest and most cost effective way these days...

Re:Speculative article != news article

[IntlHarvester]

I like OS X, but don't think your comment is based in reality. OS X is loaded with old backwards-compatibility bits, from NeXT stuff like NetInfo, to ancient BSD/Mach bits, and a ton of obsolete transition APIs.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[pablodiazgutierrez]

You're assuming Red Hat is the fundamental player of the free software world. It is not. There's not such a thing, and that's why free software is here to stay: No one owns it. No one can frigging own it. If tomorrow Red Hat disappears, there's a dozen companies with the same potential that will fill the gap. They just have less US market share at the moment, but that means nothing.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[jurv!s]

I know what you're fomenting! You're trying to bring *BSD back to life... and you almost got MS to do your dirty work. We're onto you buddy...

-Nutcruft

Re:Speculative article != news article

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire lineage of MacOS, all the way up to OS X, was just a giant clusterfuck of compatibility code. Developers are STILL writing apps for OS X using Classic libraries now that OS X is out.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[aug24]

This isn't a speculative article. It's a quiet attempt by Microsoft to gauge the community's reaction to a possible open source product.

I bloody doubt it, unless you are suggesting The BBC's Bill Thompson is a shill.

...and some dude screaming 'Developers!' might come flying out of my butt, as some guy said further up.

J.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[ettlz]

I bloody doubt it, unless you are suggesting The BBC's Bill Thompson is a shill.

I wouldn't go so far as to credit him with the intellect.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[Anonymous Coward]

this is modded 5 insightfull???

Everytime something is posted somebody complains
"this doesn't belong here, I'd rather read nothing"

Re:Speculative article != news article

[Anonymous Coward]

How can Microsoft's actions in the US result in Linux itself being "crippled"? By far the bulk of Linux-related development has always been done outside the US anyway, often in countries where RedHat is not the dominant player. Any actions MS may take in the US to favour or damage RedHat will therefore have a minimal effect on what happens to Linux in general, as will any attempt to leverage their patent portfolio. Even countries that allow software patenting (which is by no means all of them) tend to have rather more restrictive definitions of patentability than the liberal US ones, so much of their "offensive patent portfolio" can safely be ignored by the six billion or so people who don't live in the US.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[aug24]

Fair enough, his articles do tend to be a bit light. But he's definitely not a MS fan, or he's the best sleeper agent not on 24.

J.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[billthom]

Nice thought - I wish M$ had paid me vast amounts of cash to float the idea, and if they do go ahead with I will of course expect a cut... but the sad truth is that I'm an IT journalist and I tend to lie awake at night thinking deep thoughts about computing and the future. This one has been in the back of my mind for ages, and I was chatting about it with a friend last week and he suggested I write it down. Like I said in the article - I know nothing about Microsoft's plans and I'm not exactly their best friend!

Re:Speculative article != news article

[billthom]

'a bit light'! huh - you try getting serious tech discussion into a BBC news article for general readers :-) Honest, I'm not paid by M$ and I don't own shares in *anything* except through my personal pension. I'm just trying to keep the conversation lively....

Re:Speculative article != news article

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget, that even if MS, by bribing enough government officals, and maybe even quietly killing off some people, could stop the enterprise Linux movement (Red Hat, SUSE, fill in your own) of the world, there's still all the people who'll download and host all the Linux distros they like. There are so many torrents/whatever else out there that MS would be worse off than the **AA trying to stop it.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[aug24]

Hullo Bill ;-)

Sorry, I see that that might read badly - I meant light for a /. reader. Comparing your stuff to the stuff The Times et al print, you're a light year ahead.

I think anyone who reads your stuff will know the bloke who suggested that article might be an MS plant is a berk. Plus if you're anything like the other BBC freelancers I vaguely know, you're prolly not paid particularly well by them either!

J.

Re:Speculative article != news article

[dfjghsk]

Bill, thanks for writting the article.. but it's never going to happen.. here's why:

Market Cap
RHAT: 2.69B
MSFT: 276.70B

Profits

RHAT:
Gross: 158 million
Net: 45 million

MSFT:
Gross: 30 billion
Net: 8 billion

And that's from one of the largest (possibly second only to SuSE) Linux companies. If anything, Red Hat and SuSE would want to become more like MSFT!

Re:Speculative article != news article

[Reziac]

On looking at the poll questions, it occurred to me that it *could* instead have been Red Hat's poll, as an attempt to learn how their customers would take an admission of "ooops, patent nonsense". The tone of the questions sounds too defensive for M$, even tho exploring such issues thru a poll does sound more like the sort of thing they'd do.

Note: I've also taken some IT polls that were clearly sponsored by M$, and they were much more neutral in tone. (Ditto polls obviously sponsored by AOL.)

Probably on a very cold day in hell

[Lead Butthead]

Just think about the type of things that Microsoft do (competitive practice that edge on illegality) and the sort of things that are said repeatly about Open Source movement by this company, from employees in the trenches all the way to officers of highest level. My own conclusion is that a snowball has better chance in hell than Microsoft ever switching over to Open Source model.

Great theory, difficult implementation

[Sv-Manowar]

Releasing anything resembling the source code to windows would be laden with problems for Microsoft. Opening their customers to a whole range of security holes created by decades of patch-fixes and arcane support layers for retired API's would possibly leave them with a public relations disaster on their hands, not to mention the financial repercussions.

However, it is interesting to imagine a truly level playing field between Windows & Unix based operating systems, in freedom and price terms. Would end users choose unix based systems over windows based systems given the full freedom of choice and knowledge that applications could run on either? Also the possibilities for code and standards interaction between two entirely open systems and the continued improvement of both in competetive and meaningful ways is something that could potentially be extremely beneficial to the computing ecosystem at large

Re:Great theory, difficult implementation

[TapeCutter]

"Would end users choose unix based systems over windows based systems given the full freedom of choice and knowledge that applications could run on either?"

Writing commercial grade applications that use a single code base for both *nix and Windows is not that difficult, simply avoid platform specific API's such as MFC. If you cannot avoid them then seperate that part of the code from the rest of the application and you will still end up with ~80% common code.

The expensive (and boring) part is comprehensive testing of the application on multiple versions of multiple platforms.

Re:Great theory, difficult implementation

[spitzak]

An open-source windows would be very quickly modified to be compatable with Linux/POSIX/Unix (ie to the point that non-GUI Linux apps run with no changes, and all scripts and shells work).

It is hard to say if Linux would be modified as well, probably to pick up gui and services stuff from Windows. If this starts to happen the result is likely to be a merge.

Best is subjective.

[mOoZik]

MS has 90%+ of the market. Why should they try to do anyting other than what they're doing, which is obviously working? They seem pretty content!

Re:Best is subjective.

[grcumb]

"MS has 90%+ of the market. Why should they try to do anyting other than what they're doing, which is obviously working? They seem pretty content!"

I bet that's exactly what the T-Rex thought when some stupid little proto-mammal scuttled across his toe. 8^)

Re:Best is subjective.

[mOoZik]

What was the T-Rex to do? Build a rocketship and intercept the asteroid that eventually destroyed its t-rex kind?

Sorry - wrong link. Too many firefox tabs :(

[mr_tenor]

No, you can't have a pony

Re:Sorry - wrong link. Too many firefox tabs :(

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't you glad you didn't choose that monkey-porn tab?

Re:Sorry - wrong link. Too many firefox tabs :(

[Anonymous Coward]

You suck.

Get it right first time.

You remember....

[64nDh1]

You remember when you were a kid, and didn't give too much thought or place too much imagination on the creative writing you had to do in class? Maybe it was a sunny day, and your attention was focussed on what was outside the window, whether you were a nerd or not, because it was so stiflingly hot and boring in the classroom? Then when you needed to finish writing that stupid little essay, your pointless flight of fantasy, what way did you wrap it up? "....then I woke up. It was all a dream."

From TFA

The net's core architecture moves over too, with Micrix on the DNS root servers, and even Google migrates the Googleplex's servers, simply because the support environment is better and patches are rolled out more efficiently and with fewer errors.

Even Apple aficionados are dumping Mac OS for Micrix on their Powerbooks.
....
Of course, all of this is a fantasy for the summer holidays. I have absolutely no reason to believe that such a future could come to pass.

Nobody at Microsoft tells me anything, I have not heard any rumours and I do not know nothing. I am just indulging in a bit of imaginative thinking."

This guy seems to have been taken by the recent spell of good weather in whatever part of the world he's in. This is wanton garbage.

MS don't need to go open source

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Microsoft doesn't need to go open source. It needs to play by the damn rules. If we have industry standards for 99% of the market then 1% of the market (who happens to have the whole pie except for crumbs) ignores them, then we end up with a pointless industry working against each other.

Get MS to play by the rules set out by the other people and we'll have a better industry for all. Maybe it won't be perfect and it sure won't solve every problem, but everyones problems will be more inline rather than the "Linux VS Mac VS Windows" bullshit we have going on in it now.

Re:MS don't need to go open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this up - it's the honest truth..

The prupose of a company

[paulius_g]

Microsoft is one of the biggest companies in the world. They have many employees, many products and many shareholders.

So putting on such a big project such as Windows on Open Source would seem ridiculous both for Bill Gate, its executives and all the shareholders out there. It is Microsoft's job to please these shareholders: to wipe the competition apart and to build more and more profit.

Here's another topic that we should "openly" discuss: profits. Where is Microsoft going to get profits? Oh sure, the company has a lot of money in stock, but it cannot continue working in losses instead of profits. They could make money by offering technical support, but they can make even more money by offering their Windows products!

Never the less, I think that this is an interesting vision. And this could happen in the future when another operating system would attempt to take over Windows (Oh please! Someone make this happen). It would sure be very interesting to see how Windows could be improved and what a great product it could become. But until then, Microsoft will continue to offer a closed copy of their products.

Case closed!
(Or maybe not)

Re:The prupose of a company

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is microsoft one of the biggest companies in the world? Maybe they're one of, if not the biggest software companies in terms of money and employees and real estate. But microsoft can't hold a candle to the size, money, and power of the world's really large companies.

Let me just say...

[rbarreira]

hahahahahaha.

hahahahahahahahhahaa.

haaaaaahahahahaha...

What?

[hazzey]

allocate a billion dollars ... turning it into the world's best operating system

Or how about they spend that same billion dollars and make Windows the world's best operating system. What makes open source so great that it has to be better than what is currently being done? I am no talking about the benefits of OS, just in the context that this article seems to use: Microsoft spending $1 billion on this project themselves and then making it open source.

Don't you think that this is what Mr. Gate already is trying to do?

Note: before you flame, this is not about OS vs. closed source. This is about corporate goals.

Embrace, Extend, Exterminate

[DaveM753]

Possible future quotes from one Mr. Ballmer:

Embrace: "Microsoft will now provide a free Open Source Operating System. We are doing this to ensure that even citizens of the poorest of nations can freely access information via the Internet. We will work closely with existing Open Source Software developers to ensure their ability to produce cross-platform software to meet that end."

Extend: "As Microsoft's Open Source Operating System has grown in popularity, it appears that cross-platform software packages on some competing operating systems are introducing security holes that endanger user privacy. Therefore, we at Microsoft will add high-strength encryption standards based on our .PRIVACY(TM) Security Extentions."

Exterminate: "Software not compatible with .PRIVACY(TM) Security Extentions standards will no longer work with Microsoft's ... blah, blah, blah..."

...you get the picture...

Why bother?

[Bob_Robertson]

If you'd asked if Microsoft would release their application and development suite as binaries for Linux, for a price, I'd say "Sure! As soon as they realize that the OS is now a commodity they cannot count on for their profit margins any more."

However, Microsoft will not release Windows as Open Source. They cannot, because there is too much stolen code in it. **cough**BSD**cough**

IF Microsoft had released Office for every OS out there, rather than trying to own the entire PC from device drivers to applications to keyboards and mice, they would indeed own the office, likely for the rest of time. But they didn't. They got greedy, they wanted it all, and focused so much effort and time trying to LOCK IN users and LOCK OUT any alternatives that they lost sight of the one thing that they used to do well: Write applications.

They tried. 64-bit Win95 for the Alpha did indeed get sold, but then they abandoned it. This left customers hanging and looking for an alternative, and they were pissed enough at MS to not go back. This is not smart, and it demonstrates the lack of forethought that has created the environment for disaster that Windows Vista forshadows.

Who will upgrade their hardware to relative supercomputers just to pay for an upgrade to software they already have and that already works? The vision of those hardy souls who have never upgraded from Win98 because, face it, Win98 and Office97 are still perfectly good for 99.99% of what everyone does.

So when Office97 documents start failing because Microsoft changed their formats again, don't expect companies to spend $2000/seat to just do what they could do yesterday. OpenOffice is already here.

And when IE7 won't install on anything older than WinXP, don't expect that same $2000/seat upgrade to be spent to, again, just do today what worked fine yesterday. Firefox, Opera, Mozilla &etc are already here.

The F/OSS community already has a head start in making functional apps to do what needs doing regardless of OS, on existing hardware, using commodity protocols. Microsoft can never catch up trying to do that, because they have never been successful at doing that. They CHOSE not to be compatible, not to be frugal, not to play nice with others.

Microsoft as a company believes this is some kind of "race" that they have to "win", but while Microsoft spends bails of money "mobilizing their sales and marketing departments", F/OSS developers will continue to write good code.

Bob-

Re:Why bother?

[Zak3056]

However, Microsoft will not release Windows as Open Source. They cannot, because there is too much stolen code in it. **cough**BSD**cough**

Given that the infamous "running strings on ftp.exe" results in the Berkeley Regents copyright notice, I daresay that this code is NOT stolen, and is being used according to license.

No, the real reason this will never happen is that there isn't anything in it for MS--interoperability weakens their monopoly, and Open Source doesn't offer anything compelling enough (to them) to make that kind of move. However, I think we will see more and more dev and system administration tools end up under some form of F/OSS license. They already have a few projects in the wild (two of them are actually hosted on sourceforge!)

That actually has a real benefit to microsoft--particularly if Balmer was serious when he did his monkey dance and shouted "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!" The CPL seems to be what they're currently looking at for that sort of thing, let's see how they progress.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

"However, Microsoft will not release Windows as Open Source. They cannot, because there is too much stolen code in it. **cough**BSD**cough**"

Quite frankly sir, you're an idiot. BSD code in Windows is there legally and fairly. The BSDL was *designed* so that anybody can use it in any way they wish, provided that they done't claim to have written it, or sue the authors if it breaks.

You GNU zealots are a source of endless ammusement!

Such a farsical religion you have!

Re:Why bother?

[kendallemm]

Not only is it very difficult to steal BSD code, seeing as how all you need to do is put in a tiny little blurb about UC copyright along with the usual "AS IS" bitty somewhere + promise not to imply that UC (or the copyright holder in question) endorses your product, but I'm pretty sure that you've offended a good number of BSD developers with the insinuation that Windows is in some substantial way built on their code.

Re:Why bother?

[andersbergh]

I say: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q306819/relnotes.h tm, read the copyright section

Re:Why bother?

[Bob_Robertson]

Thank you. :^)

The Cathedral and the Bazaar all over again

[netcrusher88]

Crucially, however, it does not listen to what [major] leaders of the free and open source software movement are saying

Therein lies the problem. They don't listen - they use the time-tested Microsoft Cathedral system. Not only that, it's a middle-ages Catholic cathedral (no offense, just a metaphor). All the stuff is there, but you are encouraged to ignore that stuff and just use it as is. And input on low-level stuff is ignored.

Sure, it's GPL. You're free to clone (Anglican, Episcopal) or otherwise fork (other protestant) Micrix, but it's still Micrix.

"But that doesn't hurt Linux!" you cry. True. Why? Linus Torvalds accepts input and collaboration from users into the main kernel tree (the Bazaar). There is no need to fork.

Micrix would inspire fragmentation. Show me one example of fragmentation working well. I can think of several examples of it going wrong, right off the top of my head. (Linux distributions (there's no standard, scares people) and packaging (dpkg, rpm, tgz, Portage, Autopackage...) for example) Confusing end users is a certified Bad Thing(tm).

Oh, and no offense to anyone of any religion I may have offended. I don't think badly of any religion, they just seemed like a good way to extend the Cathedral and Bazaar metaphor. Oh, and kudos to Eric S. Raymond.

oh no!

[pair-a-noyd]

Could this ever happen?

God I hope not!!

Open OS? No way

[aword]

Why does M$ want to do that (an Open OS) When they control > 90% of the desktop?

However, they can choose to fund some of those Windows based opensource projects on Sourceforge; or better, lure some projects to be part of "open source windows apps project" say at http://www.winsource.net/

How about opening older WINDOWS?

[Announcer]

How about this... when older versions of windows "die" (lose *all* support from the Mothership) why don't they open *those* up to OSS? That would make all versions of Windows from 98 on back become Open Source/PD.

Yeah, we can dream.

Re:How about opening older WINDOWS?

[PakProtector]

The reason they are not opening up Windows 1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.11, 95/98/ME, is because they probably contain some proprietary code that is still used even today in the current versions of the operating system.

Please, think before you post.

Suuure...

[Anonymous Coward]

About the same time this happens, I'll have monkey shooting out of my butt...

What's that..? Nevermind, it's only lunch talking again.

While we wre on if's

[Mr. Maestro]

If my aunt had testicles, she'd be my uncle.
That should sum this article up.

OS/2, UNIX, NT, VMS

[jimmydevice]

used them all, just like DOS or OS8, there is a common thread. And that thread isn't the future of thinking machines. Until we get something that isn't silicon based
JimD. (kook)

Could this ever happen? YES! And here's why:

[Spy der Mann]

What, you expected another no like the other 9,999 posts in here? :P

Hey, at least I got to be original :)

been there...

[William Robinson]

They already have one...You Insensitive Clod!!

Like Apple they would go BSD not GPL

[AHumbleOpinion]

... donating parts of the Windows and Office code bases under the GPL and turning it into the world's best operating system.' Could this ever happen?

Like Apple they would go BSD not GPL.

Re:Like Apple they would go BSD not GPL

[argent]

Whether they went BSD or GPL, they wouldn't do it like Apple.

Re:Obligatory

[hungrygrue]

Yes. If Windows were open sourced, it would be incorporated into Wine. In very short order, every legacy Windows application would run seamlessly under Linux and Windows as a stand alone operating system would simply fade away. So... another good (from MSFT's perspective at least) reason for them not to do so.

Hmm..

[highwind81]

Could this ever happen?

no.

Oddly..

[NekoXP]

.. why wouldn't I be surprised if this was already happening?

Such rumours of an x86 MacOS were on, off, discounted and resurfacing for years
and last month it came true.

Microsoft HAS been embracing Linux, Open Source (see hiring Gentoo founder Daniel
Robbins et al.) and seriously.. "opening" office document schemas may be the first
step..

MS may be able to bridge that gap that no fully open operating system can; by
open sourcing enough parts to allow interoperability and acceptability yet
being able to - with it's billions of dollars - support and also PROTECT the
interests of it's partners and the interests of companies who want to stay closed
source (ATI, nVidia) and have proprietary or otherwised closed products based
around that OS and support.

Wow. It sounds good. Almost too good. Like a pack of Marlboro to a lung cancer
victim..

WindowsWM

[Anonymous Coward]

If they release a Windows windows manager it could kill KDE and Gnome and even all UI toolkits from Qt to gtk to WxWidgets, etc. It would make Windows/Linux cross platform development a snap, and put Windows on the same quality footing as OSX (*cough* except for the Windows WM part).

The WindowsWM part could still be sold as closed source so Bill can ensure that everyone pays for a copy.

This misses the point!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has NEVER sold their products based on technical excellence!

Microsoft has NEVER been successful based on providing what the customer wants/needs!

Microsoft has ALWAYS been successful by providing what is good for Microsoft and then bribing/coercing/enticing users to concentrate ONLY on what they have provided!

This is anathema to open source, where people work on what they want because they want to; where people use what they like because they like using it or see technical advantages in using it; where a thousand different ideas may be tried/promoted/used with market evolution leaving the best and brightest. No, Microsoft is the Catholic church, where only one set of ideas is permitted and the rest are damned to hell; by decree if possible, by force if necessary.

They allocate a billion dollars worth of programmers to shine and polish [The new OS] for a year, improving its compatibility with Windows Server technologies, donating parts of the Windows and Office code bases under the GPL and turning it into the world's best operating system.' Could this ever happen?

NO! Because the passion isn't there. Because people won't work on it because they love it; simply because they are paid to!

And, paying the bills, what do you think Microsoft would force this billion dollars worth of programmers to concentrate on? Things that improve the user experience without locking in customers to future Microsoft products? Perhaps some new paradigm that would improve the user experience but weaken Microsoft's hold on OEM's and the market? Riiiight!

No, here's why

[MBCook]

No, it won't happen. Despite all the other good reasons why it won't happen... here is my big one:

Portability. If MS were to move Office to X under MS-Redhat (or whatever), that would mean it should be possible to get Office running under Gentoo (which isn't the kind of lock-in MS would like). So they'd have to do something like make a special toolkit (which they would probably do anyways). But that toolkit would have to use X, so it could still be put on Gentoo. So they'd have to change X. That means either writing their own X server or adding patches to the existing one. If the patch it, they have to release it so that won't work unless you need their special kernel stuff. But they'd have to release that too (it couldn't be a module, so it'd have to be GPL). In the end, anyone with Gentoo (or whatever) and some time should be able to run the program that would run only on MS-Redhat.

The only way to fix it is patching the kernel or X, and then they'd have to release code. The other option is to write their own kernel/X from scratch... but that's what Longhorn is supposed to be (a complete rewrite). So... why bother?

Given the way MS operates, it doesn't make sense. Now to provide a better Unix on Windows environment (like better POSIX compliance, a version of BASH, etc) in the form of a good Services for Unix so that applications that are cross-platform can be run easily on Windows, that could help them (making it easy to run Unix/Linux/BSD programs on Windows opening up tons of applications and such). Out of the two, that would be FAR more likely.

But I doubt that would happen, because to allow people to easily port Unix stuff would mean allowing people to write Unix stuff and trade in their Windows servers down the line for Linux. To make it easier to keep running the platform that way would make it easier to switch off it. So it won't happen, it will stay crippled.

Re:No, here's why

[TheRaven64]

If MS were to move Office to X under MS-Redhat (or whatever), that would mean it should be possible to get Office running under Gentoo (which isn't the kind of lock-in MS would like).

Rubbish. That is exactly the kind of lock-in MS would like. If you want to buy MS Office, you have to buy MS Linux (or whatever). That means every corporate customer will buy MS Linux. If you want to run an illegal copy of MS Office on Gentoo, then this just means you will be producing MS Office documents, cementing office lock-in.

Re:No, here's why

[markdavis]

MS *NEVER* has to release the code for MS-Office. If it were ported to X, that doesn't make it subject to GPL. Plus, it would not be difficult for them to hide code in MS-Office that determines which Linux Distro it is and only run on the one(s) of their choice. And if they ever did do such a port (which I doubt), it would very much be typical MS style for them to pick and choose which distro(s) they support and lock everyone else out.

polishing a turd

[l8apex]

you can polish a turd but in the end it's still... :)

ok

[Kafka_Canada]

The usual tripe from BBC, I guess.

remember windows forms went open

[ghee22]

this may have been more than MS dipping their toes into Open Source. Although the obvious reason to open windows forms is to allow easier ($) development onto windows, they may just be testing what developers will do with the code. Was it added onto? did opening allow for free development (goodbye outsourcing)?

opening windows api also has spread development (see .net)

i see more open source in MS's future, but only to spread development for apps on windows.

sure....

[RuiFerreira]

If my granny had wheals she would be a truck...

As likely as the following

[Man in Spandex]

Mr. Burns: Smithers, I think I'll donate a million dollars to the local orphanage........ when pigs fly
*Burns and Smithers laugh and see Homer's pig fly by*
Smithers: So, are you going to donate right now sir
Mr. Burns: Hmm I prefer not to.

Re:As likely as the following

[ryanov]

The actual last line is "I'd still prefer not."

Don't know why it's funnier to me that way, but... whatever. :)

Re:As likely as the following

[md27]

But unless years of TV and movies have lied to me that exact sceen did happen. Are you saying the Simpsons aren't real?!?

Hypothetical

[AhBeeDoi]

And, so, like, if God and Superman got into a fight ....

Paging Dr. Henry Heimlich....

[SeventyBang]

....to Redmond. Paging Dr. Henry Heimlich to Redmond...Bill Gates is choking on his supper from laughing so hard.

Did someone dump a little flea spray and kool-aid in this guy's meth?

This guy needs to stop by eBay and buy a clue.

The only things you'll ever see WHG III giving away are through his foundation - innoculations for the third world, etc. That section of Redmond may have hired OS people, but that doesn't mean they'll ever understand OS. Think of OS as being infrasound or ultrasound. It's outside their realm of recognition, regardless of whether it's right or wrong - it just doesn't fit within their philosophy. I'm guessing many|most[1] long-term MS personnel if pushed outside of the door would have a hard time understanding OS without some deprogramming. It's not part of the lifestyle.

____________________________
[1]n.b. I didn't say 'all'.

Getting a clue

[stox]

Microsoft still suffers from the "All Star" syndrome. Hire the best people money can buy, and the rest will take care of itself. Sorry folks, it doesn't work this way. The most productive teams I have ever worked in have consisted of the most gifted, and the most brain dead, with a generous distribution in between. You need a broad view, those who can see universe, the sky, and the ground below us. All make a substantial contribution to a truly great product.

If Elephants Had Wings

[Doc Ruby]

Microsoft doesn't make money off the "best" anything. Quality isn't necessary to defend their monopoly, and hurts their upgrade business, which is how they make their money. So spending money on quality, with any technique, isn't only a waste of money, it's counterproductive. Then consider all the risks to their monopoly from opening their source, both market competition and revelations of abyssmal security work. The whole idea is a joke.

But then media types are always publishing their fantasies of how capitalists somehow care about their "legacy". Like when they talk about US Presidents, who they think would forego all the power and money for themselves and their friends, in order to do something "good for the people". Out of the goodness of their hearts. Such blather is only the measure of the "journalist", and their delusions about how actually powerful people think.

No this could not happen

[melted]

Microsoft is not about "shine and polish". It's about "just do a good enough job to get by and sell". They'd be too embarrassed to open up the code.

Microsoft has never had the management quality...

[Futurepower(R)]

In my opinion, Microsoft has never had the management quality necessary to do what the Slashdot story proposes.

Wrong Question

[General_Tso]

Why invest all that in Windows? Because the majority uses Windows? That's great rational. Market share, bug fixes, and lots of money invested don't make an OS great.

Free OS users are cheap

[Jeremi]

Micrix users, now getting their operating system for free, do not mind paying out for a word processor

This bit made me laugh. If there's one thing that's true about OS's, it's this: the less you paid for the OS, the less you are likely to be willing to pay for applications. After all (the user thinks) if the a whole OS only costs $X, why should one measly application be worth more than that?

Re:Free OS users are cheap

[smash]

Your argument is flawed.

I don't use Linux because it's cheap.

I use Linux because it works. I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on software in the last decade, and I'm not about to stop now.

In the good old days, computers came with the OS built in. People still paid for applications. Most Windows users don't pay directly for Windows either - they get it with their computer.

smash.

Re:Free OS users are cheap

[Rocketship Underpant]

"If there's one thing that's true about OS's, it's this: the less you paid for the OS, the less you are likely to be willing to pay for applications."

Are you sure? I think that because a person's money is limited, spending less on one item lets you spend more on another. Few people can afford to pay $300 for XP Professional and then another $400 for Office--just to get basic computer functionality. But if the OS is free, then there will be money available for a reasonably priced office suite and other software.

Re:Free OS users are cheap

[TheRaven64]

Sounds like the author are missing the point. People[1] run Free operating systems because they enjoy the freedom (from vendor lock-in mainly) that Free software gives them. By running a proprietary word processor on top would completely nullify this advantage.

[1] And by people I mean corporate buyers.

Only if

[MrShaggy]

>>Windows and Office code bases under the GPL and turning it into the world's best operating system.' Could this ever happen?

Only if they found ice on Mars first...

DOH!

Actually I think that anything is possible. Mactel kinda proves this.

Windowes being the right side of things, being easy for everyone to use.
Linux being on the left, open, not so user-friendly, stable.

There is mac that is bringing it up the middle. Stable yet user-friendly. Gonna kick some Linux-complaceny in the pants.

I think that MS might be really considering that they can bring it together too. The usability of windows and the stability of *nix.

I know good name for their new OS!

LINDOWS! "where do you want to shove your penguin today ?"

Forking

[AndyChrist]

Forked projects occasionally, though not always, end up viable alternatives.

If Microsoft took the traditional route of forking a fairly recent version of the stable codebase, they'd have a decent chance of being able to actually sell something.

Like MacOS X?

This isn't a fork off the beaten path into the wilderness, presumably, this would be a fork into Windows compatibility. The target market wouldn't be Linux users, so their baseline and opinions wouldn't count for much. The main target would be current windows users, whom the linux programmers would have incentive to follow...both for the money that comes with a userbase, and for their open source ideological reasons.

This would give MS their head start, potentially all the control they'd need to keep their lead, while making Slashdot shut up a bit.

Re:Forking

[HiThere]

If it were GPL, I wouldn't care...as long as it was an official release from the MS corp. A release from a team of their engineers would leave me coldly skeptical. I would be expecting that at some point MS, the corp, would swoop down with a bunch of concealed patents, and start suing everyone they didn't like for patent infringement.

They haven't earned much in the way of trust.

Re:Forking

[Baddas]

Precisely like OS X. Taking an established product, going to the root of BSD or *nix sources, and creating a product which meets the requirements of your users and opens the code while retaining the ability to profit wildly.

Which of course is presumed to be Microsoft's goal. After all, failing in your fiduciary duty will get you a minority shareholder lawsuit faster than you can say Cryptonomicon.

Certainly, with regard to BSD-licensed materials, wasn't there some foofraw about Microsoft's TCP/IP stack being similar-if-not-identical?

Re:Forking

[Lisandro]

I think it was until NT that Windozes ran the BSD TCP/IP stack; some assorted BSD utilities are still available on Windows to this day. Then again, if they meet the requirements of the BSD license, they're more than entitled to.

Re:Forking

[sumdumass]

Microsoft at one time actualy developed parts (in cinjunction with) of BSD. Thier SMB (netbios) protocal was basicaly aquiered this way and is the reason Samba can reverse engineer most of it. Microsoft also has several other BSD dirivitives in thier operating systems too. There is a list of confirmed stuff but i cannot seem to locate it right now.

Although using BSD code doesn't violate much of anyhtign if they documetned it and followed the licensing of it.

Could this ever happen?

[Pole_Position]

Sure, right after Apple makes a 2 button mouse.

lotsa of 'Could this ever happen ?'

[copdk4]

Could Google stop delivering Web Search ?
Could Bill Gates go back and finish his school?
Could Bush remove troops from Iraq ?
Could AlQaeda stop bombing places ?
Could Indian Programmers demand American equivalent Salaries ?
Could Chris Rock stop doing comedy ?

If Answer to any of above is YES ? well that might happen.. but MS Windows going Open Source..never gonna happen..

Too big of a project

[parvenu74]

Allocating a billion dollars to the project wouldn't do it. As it is now, more people are involved in getting a version of Windows to launch-state then it took to put a man on the moon. Simply managing the logisitics of something of that scale is boggling enough... and that's before you even look at the quality of the operating system itself. I am curioous, though, how much money it took Apple, all tolled, to get OS X from dream to reality. Anyone want to venture a guess that the total was well north of a billion dollars?

Re:Too big of a project

[Ed_1024]

Also, why does spending $billions on a particular software environment in any way guarantee that it will be mightily improved?

Microsoft have been doing that for the last 15+ years with Windows and look where that has ended up...

Massive, monolithic projects like that, worked on by 10,000 programmers, have a poor history of results. Doomed from the start, really.

Talking of DOOM, how many people wrote that? Think of something like Quake: Almost an operating system in it's own right but you could count the authors on the fingers of one hand. It was lean, mean, stable and fast. Could Microsoft have produced it, even on an unlimited budget?

Putting developpers first

[fanha]

In the spirit of putting developpers first, Microsoft should make Visual Studio an open source project first. Then we can all benefit from it's awesome new list of additions:

- 100% increase in startup times
- 250% increase in IntelliSense lag
- Newly added: Features that bring up a "TODO" box or crash the program when used in random contexts
- The CD would include binaries instead of actual executables, and you would benefit from the productive experience of building it yourself
- MSDN Library would be replaced with five pages: Home, Download, Contributing, Links, and Help; the latter would lead to a set of poorly formatted discussion forums rather than the obviously overinflated and uselessly wordy MSDN help files
- The compiler would be raved about for conforming to standards but still break quite often in addition to using the most horrendously unuseful RTTI in the world

I eagerly await MS's move to OSS since it would be so great for developpers!

Using what code?

[Markus Registrada]

If they used Microsoft's own code, it couldn't but suck. It would cost way more than a billion dollars to write good code. Then what? We already have a Free operating system, and we don't need another.

If frogs had wings,

[Ranger]

they wouldn't bump their ass.

This will never happen ...

[chris_sawtell]

This will never happen because there is huge quantities of patented code in Windows which belongs to third parties. Microsoft would have to buy in dozens if not hundreds of companies to do this. I can't see that happening.

Otoh. It would be interesting to know exactly what Daniel Robbins, and similar collegues, are doing. My own guess is that he's probably creating a superior and enhanced version of his Portage build system for Vista. And otherwise probably very little, apart from being kept safely out of circulation so that the Free World cannot make use of his talents.

Re:This will never happen ...

[MichaelSmith]

being kept safely out of circulation so that the Free World cannot make use of his talents.

The implication in this is that he has signed a contract preventing him from working on one or more OSS projects in his private time.

Do we know that this has happened? Is it legal in his juristiction?

Re:This will never happen ...

[argent]

They could do the same thing that Apple did, and run their Win32 subsystem on top of the Linux kernel, and not release any of that subsystem's source code.

It would be stupid, but they could do it.

Re:This will never happen ...

[Brunellus]

What's to say that his present, well-remunerated post at Microsoft doesn't swallow up all his available time and energy, leaving him unable to contribute to or direct FOSS projects?

After all, there's the permissible...and then the possible

Re:This will never happen ...

[cnettel]

That assumes that the Windows kernel (not other ring 0 services and subsystems, like Win32K) is a problem for Windows. I wouldn't say so. It's clearly not UNIX (the number of jokes regarding Cutley and VMS => WNT is enough to tell you that), but it clearly has some nice pieces of design. And both the Xbox and Windows XP embedded tell us you with a varying level of difficulty can turn Windows, with the NT kernel, into a quite different beast, with as much or as little of Win32 as you like.

Re:This will never happen ...

[argent]

That assumes that the Windows kernel (not other ring 0 services and subsystems, like Win32K) is a problem for Windows.

Can you elaborate a bit on what you're getting at here, because I don't think you're actually disagreeing with me.

When I said it would be stupid to replace the NT Kernel with Linux, that's because I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with the NT kernel, at least not for a desktop OS.

Yes, its unlikely, But it may happen.

[Evilhomer2300]

Although unlikely, it may occur. Think about it, Microsoft wants to be king of the market, so they make everything open and free. However, it would be a self installing worm, akin to the borg. Only, it's called the bill. It would spread across the net, taking over every computer that it came in contact with. It would be Microsoft's wet dream. "We are the bill. Lower your antivirus and surrender your hard drive. We will add your IP address and network to our own. Your computer will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile." The only thing we have to worry about however, is the damn Ferengi stealing our credit card information through our bill-mail...I mean e-mail.

Oxymoronic

[BinnyVA]

Open Windows?
That would be like saying 'Honest Politician' or a 'Kind Lawyer'.

The two two words must not be used together in the same sentence.

Excuse me...

[sn0wflake]

But that is just a plain idiotic dream. Microsoft will never go open source because it disables them to sell their products. Why pay for a product when you can download it for free. Pointless story and a waste of time if you ask me and now I'll probably be modded as troll.

World's best operating system?

[Fear the Clam]

Yeah, right.

Microsoft spends millions on a UI lab every year and the biggest innovation they can come up with is hiding Clippy.

Post isn't very clear

[geekee]

According to the article, the commentator suggests MS make a Microsoft Linux fork that is compatible with Windows. If they can get Linux users to use this version, they kill off the old Linux in favor of their fork.

If microsoft had any talent... yes

[Anonymous Coward]

but... NO

They don't care.

[edunbar93]

and turning it into the world's best operating system.' Could this ever happen?

No, because they don't give a damn about making the world's best operating system. Because they made a monopoly out of the world's worst operating system, so really, why bother?

Hmm what market O you mean Desktop.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux has the supper computers with full time programers off cource.

Basicly Linux needs a new market. They have filed their main markets to almost 100 percent. Yep super computers. Now they need a new market the desktop looks nice.

Re:Hmm what market O you mean Desktop.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux has the supper computers with full time programers off cource.

Oh to be 12 again...

Forgot the ending.

[EnsilZah]

He forgot to add the ending where Bill and Linus become fast friends and go on to have whacky adventures with faries and unicorns in a magical flying city all made of pie.

Re:Forgot the ending.

[Ryan Monster]

Ooo ... I'm making people happy! I'm the magical man, from fairy land, with a gumdrop house on lollipop lane

Re:This fits

[mpapet]

I believe it. Do you know why?

1. RH is the unquestionable leader in OSS to Microsoft's most profitable customers. For Microsoft, it's the devil they know. For red hat they will be "spared" the legal onslaught in exchange for being a good, and not too competitive partner.

2. HP did exactly this in the 90's to all of the scanner companies when they were ready to rule flatbed scanners. Killed the weak ones in -months-. Gone. Goodbye. Phones unplugged.
2a. Think about all the distros they can destroy in less than 1 month's time. All of the diversity and interest in Linux just gone with a single lawsuit repeated many times over.
2b. Adobe did the same thing to any competitor underfunded with a good idea in the 80's and 90's.

3. It's just like a corporation to do market research on something they want to do. It's totally within reason. I'd do it if I were in their shoes.

4. It's reasonable that someone from the ivy-league would be chosen for their opinion. They don't really care what the unwashed masses think because they understand how public opinion is shaped. people listen to people from MIT, not a mere state college graduate. This kind of thinking pervades marketing. They all want influencial people to bless their stuff. Microsoft too.

5. The swiftness in which this will happen will be amazing. MS is great at many things and influencing opinion will be one of them.

6. Anyone actively using Linux knows there's lots of software available that -might- infringe patents in some parts of the world. I don't use it, but I'm sure there are plenty who do. Easy pickings for lawyers.

Office Lock-in Flaw

[Anonymous Coward]

A key part of MS's current advantage is that you need Windows to run Office. If Windows were OSS, especially OSS based on Linux.. it would be under the GPL. Making it possible to make Red Hat or whatever other distro fully compatible with Office. Soon MS would lose its operating system monopoly.

Also, if Windows were GPL, people would no longer be obliged to pay for it. So MS would lose revenue there. Then when normal Linux distros became good enough people would run away from Windows completely.

Not a good strategy for Microsoft.

This reminds me of...

[teslatug]

This story reminds me of Conan's "If they mated"

GPL? Nope, here comes the MPL...

[constantnormal]

... or the Microsoft Public License.

It would work like this:

1) would-be open source developers would have to pay a subscription fee to gain access to the "open code" ...

2) and also sign NDA's prohibiting them from ever using or revealing any aspect of the code they had witnessed, in any other project for all eternity ...

3) and agree to sign over any changees they submit to the protective care of the MPL QA Council (an affiliated steering committee composed of selected Microsoft employees) ...

4) and sign over all patents and copyrights to the MPL QA Council.

This would be "sold" to corporate customers as a means of making sure their input made it into their Microsoft products, with the requisite vetting of user-supplied fixes and changes being their guarantee that no security holes would be introduced by those notorious "open source" developers.

No imagination whatsoever...

[Anonymous Coward]

This author presents his hypothetical with the single worst and unimaginative (or comically derisive) choice of name for a MS open-source product: "Micrix"

Come on ... what about Shitbrix, HansBrix, Vistarix or Any-other-ix-but-not-Micrix?

Re:No imagination whatsoever...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microdix

There's a good reason why this will never happen..

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen their source code, I see and work with it every day. It is bloated and only borderline manageable with a large force of professionals staffed to babysit it constantly. Open source projects are in an entirely different universe in comparison.

You can download the entire Linux kernel and accoutrements, build it on your own hardware with varying options, and (with a moderate amount of technical acumen) you can be reasonably confident that you will ultimately succeed in creating a build and an installation that will work.

The contrast with MS's big software projects is dramatic. First off, the source code (even excluding unit tests) is HUGE. We're talking upwards of several gigabytes. And compiling the whole thing is no easy task. Assuming you can manage to setup your speciality build environment you'll still need the better part of a waking day to compile the thing, and that's with a pretty high-end machine (say, single proc fast amd64, or duallie x86 w/ 1gb ram, or comparable). And then you have to go through the process of creating an installable version and then installing it.

The fact is that most consumers do not have the HARDWARE to pull this off today. How long will it take to download many gigs of source off DSL or Cable? Or maybe you have dialup... Do you have 50+ gigs of free hd space for the built binaries? Do you have a machine fast enough to build in less than 24 hours? Do you have the expertise to be able to install what you build? Do you have the expertise to recover from a failed build / failed installation?

With regard to the successfull open source projects out there now (linux, apache, perl, php, etc.) there are literally millions of people who can answer the equivalent questions for OSS projects with a "yes" or maybe even a "hell yes!" Because those projects are more streamlined, and more robust. For Windows, Office, or MS's other big projects, there are a lot fewer people who could make that claim.

In short, it would take a huge and lengthy development effort to transform any of MS's code bases into anything that would be acceptable fodder for the open source community. It's not impossible, but it's a huge hill to climb, and it won't, can't, happen quickly.

bunk

[Khashishi]

what's with all these hypothetical non-news articles?

Why Bill Thompson is a commentator...

[mpaque]

and not a project manager.

They allocate a billion dollars worth of programmers to shine and polish it for a year...

Uh huh...

A team of Microsoft's best coders working on a project they all believed in could, I am sure, do great stuff.

Bill, I'd like to introduce you to Fred Brooks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Mont h

Brook's Law: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."

I would suggest that if there were to be such a crash program, they would be far better served by picking one good software architect with at least three such projects under his/her belt, and giving that person absolute authority over who else would work on the project, and what changes would be made.

I'll consider any reasonable offers...

That's where Trusted Computing comes in

[Samrobb]

If MS were to move Office to X under MS-Redhat (or whatever), that would mean it should be possible to get Office running under Gentoo (which isn't the kind of lock-in MS would like). So they'd have to do something like make a special toolkit (which they would probably do anyways)... In the end, anyone with Gentoo (or whatever) and some time should be able to run the program that would run only on MS-Redhat.

Once Trusted Computing is in place and accepted, then all they would need to do is lock their office suite to a particular platform - RedHat Linux, for example. No muss, no fuss. If you're not running RedHat Trusted Linux (tm), then you won't be able to run their MS Office Linux Edition.

I think this is why MS really wants Trusted Computing. Not for multimedia, but because it helps them to lock their customers into a MS dependency.

Hey idiots, they already *have*

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.microsoft.com/sharedsource

it is software they are open sourcing - even using open source licenses if you take the time to read through soem of this.

Why?

[sean23007]

I can't help but wonder why they would do what the author of the article thinks they should do. There's no reason they would have to fork Linux and open their own code, if they wanted to do something like this. They would simply have to take the Linux kernel, port their own window manager and development tools and desktop environment to it (you know, the one everyone's used to and is the reason they can't switch), and get programs running. They could do that without too much trouble. Run Apple-style emulation layers if you have to. Fat binaries, perhaps, that run on Window with NT kernel and Windows with Linux kernel?

They would be able to keep their own code closed, since they wouldn't have to alter the Linux kernel, and they would be able to update the OS with Linux kernel upgrades as they happen. Whenever they make a fix to the kernel, it goes back to the community, yes. But they do it because it benefits them to make the fix. The fact that everyone else benefits from their fix should be a good thing for them. When they make a patch that improves security or stability for everyone, well, you just can't buy that kind of good PR.

It might work better in a legal sense if they did this with FreeBSD, just as Apple did. And that's how they can beat Apple. Do the same thing, with the same kernel baseline, but rely on their massive resources and programming ability to outpace them on the UI and applications front, meanwhile benefiting from every addition Apple contributes to BSD.

Then Windows is UNIX, and there would be no reason not to use it. They would win the desktop, the server, the handheld ... everything.

Damn it.

Not a chance, yes

[lastberserker]

Still you missed it by a mile ;-P The reason Microsoft won't "donate" so much money and dev time is because there is no value to shareholders.

Thanks for playing, and please come back for more +5 "somebody buy Slashdot moderators a clue" Insightful raitings.

Re:Not a chance, yes

[dhasenan]

That's because it would take three gigadollars and reduce their profits a bit. Individuals usually don't buy new copies of Windows, but corporations do, especially OEMs. TFA didn't even mention profits or a motivating factor for this hypothetical switch.

MS Open Source OS? I'll believe that...

[TheStonepedo]

when me shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbert.

In a pig's eye...

[crovira]

Bill Gates violates the law and throws lawyers at every loop hole he can carve out in order to maintain the monopoly (with the exception of his reesearch arm, Apple, and the Linux zealots who keep building better products but couldn't sell water to a thirsty man...)

Microsoft is about as likely to open their software as Dell is to innovate their hardware. Just be thankful the Mac happened or far fewer of you would still all be using a CLI.

Open Source Windows

[p0rnking]

Personally, I can't see M$ embracing open source on a large scale anytime soon, because of their subborness.

If they were to make an open source OS, or allowed huge parts of it to be open source, then they would be saying that their way of doing business is not the right way, and open source is the way to go, in terms of development, security ...

eyowwww

[yagu]

Man, I've got to stop checking my slashdot past 1 a.m. Thought I saw an article about Microsoft doing an Open Source OS......

A GPL Windows? Never happen.

[qa'lth]

But, were I Microsoft, I could think of ways to leverage the Linux development progress cheaply and easily, and piss off all the OSS people all at once.

First, MS should buy Transgaming. They own Cedega, which is a closed fork of the Wine tree. No need to support the WINE project with actual patches, since there's no licensing requirements.

Second, knock together, say, a FreeBSD or Linux distribution. X11, standard userland, everything.

Third, use their internal OS programmers to turn Cedega into the greatest thing since sliced bread. A -perfect- implementation of the Win32 API on top of Linux.

Fourth, get all the hardware manufacturers on board for drivers. Institute a driver program. Ta-da, everyone has drivers, but only on platforms MS wants to support. IE, x86. OSS driver development continues, but at a slower pace with fewer people actively testing.

Fifth, make the install as painless as a standard Windows install. No text-mode, no kernel boot stuff, just the splash we all know and love(/hate)

Fifth, sell for the price of a Windows license, or a little less. Allow the base OS to be downloaded freely, ala Darwin, but keep the WINE/Win32 API closed and sealed off.

Since their Win32 API is perfect, Visual Studio should run flawlessly. AND, with the proper window manager on X11 (as they will likely do this), it would be visually indistinguishable from standard Windows. Power-users could install Gnome/KDE/fluxbox/windowmaker/whatever, and the Win32 API would still be perfectly available, exportable over the network as any X11 app, etc.

Leverage the community to build the kernel and userland. Use their own people to maintain just the API - keep the total lock-in.

See the Difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this ever happen? Sure, why the hell not! Anything is possible.

Would this ever happen? No, or when hell freezes over!

See the difference?

Dead projects on Sourceforge

[jesterzog]

Sourceforge is littered with the remains of OSS projects that were fun to code and get working, but that nobody wants to maintain anymore.

What you've said about the administration problems for large projects is true, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that there are lots of unfinished projects lying around places like Sourceforge.

A few months ago, I was looking for a library that would do something, but it just didn't exist. What I did find, though, was someone's Sourceforge effort from five years ago. It wasn't packaged very well, and it only covered about 70% of what I'd ideally want. I was able to contact the original author, and while he's still interested in it, he really doesn't have the time (or to some extent the expertise) to finish it.

Since then, I've decided to try to pick up where the previous developer left off. I've re-packaged the code, and now I'm thinking about extending it to cover what I wanted to do previously. I don't know how successful I'll be in finishing it off, and to be honest I think it's unlikely. But the fact that someone else made their own effort available, and occupying sourceforge, made it much easier for me to get my own effort underway.

Re:Dead projects on Sourceforge

[Anonymous Coward]

That's admirable! If my coding skills were better I'd take over a couple of stagnent Sourceforge projects.

I wish someone would take over cinelerra. I haven't been able to get recent builds to compile, and previous builds (when it did compile) I spent ~2 hours tracking down obscure source packages they were linking to, and several more hours compiling and fixing THOSE before I could get cinelerra compiled. Once the program is compiled, it runs great but the current maintainer broke the package.

In the meantime I'm learning Broadcast 2000 for personal projects, but when it comes to projects for client I'll have to boot Windows and go back to MediaStudio Pro (Broadcast 2000 is FAR too picky about what video formats it will import)

On that note: hey Ulead! Port MediaStudio Pro to Linux and I'll buy it!

Re:Dead projects on Sourceforge

[Reziac]

Your tale illustrates *exactly* why I feel that abandoned, unfinished, half-baked, and other not-yet-working stuff *should* be kept available on Sourceforge, rather than done away with (as I heard SF once discussed doing). Who knows what partly-baked idea might be just the right seed for another project, which DOES get finished??

Re:Dead projects on Sourceforge

[The_Wilschon]

Same thing here. I've picked up a 0.1 release window manager project. Unfortunately, I haven't made a whole lot of progress on it yet (understanding X is hell!), but maybe it'll get there. If not, well, nobody uses it now, so no loss.

Re:Obligatory

[ryanov]

Not necessarily. Windows is STILL easier to install, most of the time.

When Hell freezes over perhaps but.....

[KingBahamut]

Apple is going to put an Intel Chip into a system and sell it....Didnt they say that would never happen?

The Eagles got back together.....Did they say that was never going to happen?

This article is a waste

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is a total waste of time and space. If I had eggs, I could have eggs and bacon, if I had bacon.

One word...

[kcb93x]

Mu.

Not to mention...

[Anonymous Coward]

...you cannot make diamonds out of shit.

The bad quality would be there, everything would need to be rewritten, and who would do that? We have better alternatives, let's use those. Let's just make emulation layers better.

Red Cap!

[khasim]

So, Microsoft buys out Red Hat for a huge amount of money....

Why would the people who worked at Red Hat still work there after Microsoft buys them?

Why wouldn't that take their huge checks and start a new company, with all the GPL'd code and industry love they've earned and call it something like "Red Cap" and pick up right were they left off.

Except they're all much richer than before.

Microsoft can hire individuals away from Linux-based companies ... but Microsoft cannot do anything to the people who WANT to work on Linux.

And I wouldn't trust Microsoft's lawyers not to have all kinds of provisions in a developer's contract with Microsoft.

I'm sure Bill would happily pay Linus a million or two if he could legally prevent Linus from writing any more code.

Re:Red Cap!

[markdavis]

>I'm sure Bill would happily pay Linus a million or >two if he could legally prevent Linus from writing >any more code.

Your point is valid, but Linus doesn't code anymore and hasn't for many years. People give that one person ENTIRELY too much credit. Linux is far, far, far, far, far beyond a single person.

Re:Red Cap!

[NickFortune]

Your point is valid, but Linus doesn't code anymore and hasn't for many years. People give that one person ENTIRELY too much credit. Linux is far, far, far, far, far beyond a single person.

It'd be worth it from Bill's viewpoint just to remove Linus as administrator. I know Alan Cox could probably pick up the reins seamlessly, and probably a few others too.

All the same, Linux has got to where it is, in no small part due to Linus' personality and willingness to build bridges. (I'm taking the Tridge/McVoy/BitMover furore as an abberation for the time being). I think he would be a sore loss to the community. would be a serious loss to the community.

like mankind has

[samjam]

Like the offspring of the so-called proto-mammal can now do?

I think the answer to your question is "yes."

Ity shoulda developed the ability to look ahead and prepare, like MS are, like we are, like we all do.

It's a battle, not of teeth, but ideas and threats. Much more civilized. What dies is an idea or a philosphy in the minds of the playing field, not lives.

Is it just as serious? I'll leave you to answer that.

Sam

Consider this info as insider leakage...

[davidsyes]

Suppose an employee who is effectively a trojan horse got wind of a similar idea and leaked it to the BBC's guy. He and others might either be sympathetic to Open Source (to make sure a US-led company does not hijack the world, and rightly so), which is a pain in ms' ass, side, and other parts.

Now, this should be a cautionary tale, but many will say "BAH! Paranoia!", or "NAH, ms will NEVUR catch up with Open Source's ideals"... The cautionary tale is that NO ONE in Open Source can afford to allow splintering to destabilize the resilience and independence of Linux, Open Source/FLOSS and the movements behind them.

If it were so that ms purchased Red Hat, then SO WHAT? Why would the rest of LinuxLand need to crumble. Besides, Linus owns the right to the word "Linux", and he in turn could charge ms for every single instance in which they print, utter, or somehow use the word "Linux", can't he.

If LinuxLand is in some way threatened by a potential ms acquisition of Red Hat, then every last CVS and other archive had better be tagged with Red Hat-supplied, proprietary bits ready to be removed to make the cleanest, fastest, most efficient separation of newly-acquired ms code.

This should be considered a blessing, or a strategic advantage that the BBC article has come out.

Let's get rollin'. It's time for Operation Beat Back to get underway! Even if ms ultimately never buys RH and even if ms never releases some sort of cross-integrated open source-like version of *doze, then it STILL would be a useful exercise to ensure that, just as with SCO, Red Hat is not in a position to voluntarily or contractually assist ms destroy or subsume or co-opt OpenSource or LinuxLand.

Grazing in LinuxLand is NOT to be permitted to ms, for they'll just defecate or tromp and drool all over the place just enough to discourage followers and enough to taint stalwarts/intransigents and Don Quixotes.

anti-script image word: grazing

open OS

[hhawk]

They should take an older Platform like Win2000 and make it open source, taking market share away from Linux/BSD'nix. They should be selling ONLY service; not because RMS says so, because that's really all they are doing.. WHen you pay XXX $$ to MS, you get 90 days support, bug fixes, etc. (and lots of bad software).

If they were OPEN Source, you'd pay the same (at least their major customers' would) and the software would much better.

Could this ever happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. Of course, it could only happen after every nation in the world has signed an irrevokable binding agreement with Microsoft promising never to bring any future action against their company for any reason and for all time, as well as providing for dropping all pending actions and releasing Microsoft from any past settlements or legistation which in Microsoft's considered judgement may adversely impact their ability to conduct business...

Once that kind of legal waver agreement is in place, you would be amazed and should be very frightened at what could happen.

Create a level playing field by asking the current clear winner abdicate their advantage? Not likely in this reality bucky.

Not in a million years!!

[Halvy]

Why would a man who has pulled the wool over so many people eyes, bullied companies, lied to escape the grasp of the United States Justice Department, give in to a mere small group of Open Source people?

This man is a proven psychotic, sadistic, megalomaniac, and therefore will not stop until he IS stopped.

Lucky you

[ImaLamer]

Snippet From Microsoft PR Website:

Microsoft has just announced that for the past two hundred years there has been a program running that they've acquired in a recent takeover called WorldPeace 1.2. Microsoft has taken over the secret company that once ran the program using fly wheels and slide-rules and has promised to fix its flawed design which caused the program (WorldPeace) to crash ever 40-60 years.

Could this ever happen?

[SCVirus]

Could this ever happen? No, microsoft is a company with an existing market share.

Could this happen?

[catdevnull]

In a word: no.

Why? The very DNA of the MS culture is about control and profit. Open Source is the exact opposite of the MS model. While it's more likely they'll release some other product as open source (something they already give away for free), it's unlikely simply because they would lose complete control over it.

The problem is the API

[Anonymous Coward]

Opening your sources and allowing other to contribute will not save you when you have so many stinking APIs to be compatible with (Win32, MFC, many longhorn new Frameworks).

Microsoft needs opensource API architects.

shabba

[Anonymous Coward]

no.

i'm ignorant, and i don't care.

Re:This fits

[A beautiful mind]

We already have non-us in debian. As of today software patents are not valid in Europe, so i'd like to see MS try messing here.

As for the USA, you need to deal away with software patents.

Interix

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft bought Interix years ago. It's now available in the form of Microsoft Windows Services For Unix (SFU) currently version 3.5.

It is decent - I'd probably give it 3 stars (out of a possible 5). What makes it decent (in my opinion) is the porting of NetBSD's pkgsrc (http://pkgsrc.org/ to the Interix toolchain.

This means you can compile your own shit (OpenSSH, bash, etc.) from the pkgsrc collection. For those of you who are unfamiliar with pkgsrc, think Gentoo's portage.

This is where it gets really interesting. Daniel Robbins (of Gentoo fame) as we all know - now an employee of MS. Microsoft could do something really cool here if they "shared sourced" SFU as a standalone kernel and OS. They have everything in place to do it. Even if they don't open it up, at least their users might get a reliable, kick-ass OS for once.

Just a thought. I think it's (only slightly) more likely than what TFA's author imagines.

If Microsoft went opensource...

[Magnum7385]

Hey! That would mean all my friends, family, aquaintances, and myself STILL wouldn't pay for their products!

Incredible!

Seriously though (cough), if Microsoft went opensource, I personally think a lot of people (read: close to the number of them today) would still use Windows, because "all" the software is still written for Windows.. I know this would change gradually, but really, would it change things much?

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it me or are people forgetting that Microsoft is a public NASDAQ company? People will always rant at the industry leader but google manages to avoid the publicp pressure due to their enthusiasm and indirect methods of aquiring profit.

Bill Thompson

[McFadden]

I've always had serious issues with this guy. Everything you read from him reeks of self-promotion and ego rather than an genuine understanding of the industry.

If you've ever read his personal website it talks about how long he's been working with technology, how he's influenced the course of I.T. (has he crap!) and how he has this amazing ability to understand new technologies faster than most 'normal' people. And yet a few weeks ago he wrote the most ill-informed, ignorant piece I've ever read from a 'commentator' about how he couldn't port his email from Windows to Mac OS X (and of course he blamed Microsoft for his own lack of ability). Not surprisingly in the BBC feedback section, dozens of people suggested solutions which he could easily have identified from 5 minutes research on Google. Even less surprisingly, the feedback section was remove shortly afterwards.

I've barely if ever agreed with anything he's ever written. I think the fact that he has to have his face and name plastered all over his column, when every other respected BBC journalist lets their writing do the talking, says it all.

Re:Bill Thompson

[billthom]

Ouch - that stings! I'm sorry you don't think much of what I write, but the BBC column I do is just that - a personal column (hence the byline and pic) about whatever is on my mind, and I try to make it relevant and interesting to non-tech people as well as anyone who wanders in from /. I don't want or expect everyone to agree with me, but I don't think it's reasonable to accuse me of 'self-promotion and ego' as if I knew nothing about what's going on. I've got a degree in Computer Science, I used to run the new media department at The Guardian and I've been a technology writer for nearly twenty years - and the Win/Mac email piece was about the importance of standards and lockin, using my problems as a hook, not about the problem itself. But hey, it's nice to be able to have the conversation :-)

Re:This fits

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure Debian ditched non-US pretty recently. Say, within the last two months? Don't quote me, I could be mistaken, but do look into it.

crap

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy is full of shit.
And he has to have is ugly mug plastered over the page every time he dribbles over his keyboard to come up with a 'story'.

Re:This fits

[A beautiful mind]

Actually, Sarge made it not necessary but i think they are keeping it around for people using older versions, like woody or potato.

If it's necessary i'm sure it could be used to host otherwise "patent-threatened" stuff there until such time the situation solves itself in the USA.

WHAT A SHOCK!

[Anonymous Coward]

Was I the only one that missed the initial "If" when reading the headline?

Whoa...

Sure they oughtta but...

[Anonymous Coward]

There're gonna be folks who'll want to walk the empty desert just for a loaf of bread and coke(coca cola ;))and write software for fun. No one wants to maintain code andsure it'll someday be maintainable by ALL of us then Indeed microsoft will have to also take a detour.

The problem is that you need to have two sides, you have one side of the stream where Microsoft makes you feel like a retard, so they can write bulky software to appease your sovery bloated ego(because you can;t come out of denial that you can't program..smirk). You'll need to have the two sides of thecoin to be able to rebel.

It's not the direction which a proprietary centric company like microsoft is taking us, it's where we're taking us.

So my verdict: Let microsoft massage thesedimwits, imagine what'll happen when everyone'll have to understand the stuff. Then they can't hide anymore behind the GUI's!!

What I think microsoft could do

[jonwil]

Is to Open Source (or release under a shared source licence or stick as examples into MSDN or whatever else) some parts of windows.

For example:
mshtml.dll (html rendering engine)
shdocvw.dll (Internet Explorer controls and functionality)
Notepad
MS Paint
Solitare
Minesweeper
msvcrt.dll and msvcprt.dll (Visual C++ runtime library)
Character Map
wininet.dll (Windows Internet Extentions)
ole32.dll & other parts of OLE

and other upper level bits and utillities and etc.

What seems logical to us...

[thrill12]

... isn't what big companies find logical. Remember that large companies bring with it large solutions to large problems.
Large solutions are hardly ever 'simple'. They need to be created by one manager, thought over by 10, then thought over again by 100, then finally rejected because of (name your possible risk here).

A bit like the Vogons, really :)
Even if this idea of open sourcing an OS seems like a hit to Microsoft, there are probably 100 managers feeling they would be giving in and go in (ignore every wise opinion)-mode.

So, this will probably never happen, even though we think or not think it's a neat idea.

If pigs could fly

[RickySan]

see subject, says it all really

Could this ever happen?

[H9000]

hopefully not, it's better for us if they keep it closed, we should concentrate on writing good free software. my 0.02cent

This is exactly what MS should've done ...

[Qbertino]

3 years ago. MS Linux with DX 9 and a big boss dictating which ... is the kernel konfig and package management of choice. They would've owned the market within months.
They missed out. Now they are facing Apple and OSS aware business users.
They could turn the tide, simply because the PC hardware market is a complete mess and could use a big player setting standards for appliances. Which now Apple is probably going to do.
But I think it's a bit to late for that. OS X has matured, will get speedy CPUs once again and if Steve Jobs doesn't screw up (which I don't expect) we'll have OS X in the zero-fuss turnkey appliance market and Linux in the cheap workhorse market nibbling away at MS marketshares for top and bottom.
If MS hasn't gotten the message yet, it might even be just a little to late to change this.

A couple of flaws in the article...

[Reteo Varala]

Anyone who wants to can take Micrix and distribute it themselves, of course, and Microsoft does accept submissions for the code base from the community and looks carefully at what is happening back in Linux world, although it prefers to make its own fixes rather than just take code from the old world.

First of all, there is the possibility that MS can decouple the Windows interface from the operating system; this would hark back to the days of Windows 3.11, except that the underlying operating system would be far more advanced, making a lot of the things that Windows interface depends on available.

As such, the Windows interface software could conceivably remain under Microsoft's tight-fisted control, while still advertising Linux support.

When someone spots Richard Stallman running it on his laptop, the game is over, and the old Linux community gathered around Linus Torvalds falls apart as third party developers move to Micrix as a preferred platform.

Somehow, I don't think Stallman would have the absolute influence over the "GNU/Linux" community as one might think. Hell, he's still trying to convince people to tack on the GNU/. Never mind the bad blood these people still have with MS.

More importantly, I seriously doubt Stallman would use an operating system that DIDN'T use his precious GNU. He's invested WAY too much time and effort into that system to just toss it off.

And I'd bet that if "Micrix" DID, in fact, use GNU tools, he would probably avoid it until Microsoft broke down and name it GNU/Micrix. And I SERIOUSLY doubt Microsoft would willingly allow another organization to share it's mindshare like that... that would be like advertising their competition in their very product name.

KDE On Windows

[mmport80]

At least I could use KDE as an alternative DE to whatever MS builds on top of its linux kernel :)

Re:KDE On Windows

[Bambi Dee]

You can run KDE on Windows already... okay, not quite what you had in mind, I suppose.

A memo by Linus, 3 yrs. after joining Microsoft...

[D4C5CE]

I'm sure Bill would happily pay Linus a million or two if he could legally prevent Linus from writing any more code.

Actually ;-), we have credible accounts from a not-to-distant future on what will actually happen (edited):

From the office of Linus Torvalds
Date: 10.31.2008
To: BillG
From: Linus
(...)
When you hired me three years ago, you had to realize that I was going to speak my mind, no matter what the consequences. You told me that if I ever hit a wall with Steve or his people, I should let you know.
(...)
Myself, I thought I was making some pretty outrageous demands. I was stunned when you agreed to accept the General Public License mandating that everything you added at the level of the new operating system would remain open. But you've been true to your side of the bargain, and you've won my respect. You never made me alter my goal, which was world domination for Linux. I'll never forget your line: "Come on, Linus, infect the mothership." I still believe that was the best recruiting pitch ever uttered. We both took a lot of criticism from our partisans, but look what we've accomplished. The world is using software that doesn't suck!

Divide and Conquer

[antikristian]

I think Microsoft will rather buy a different company which produce an OS, Open source it in a gpl incopatible lisence, get backing in the community and repeat. This way they keep weakening the open source community for every release they make, and microsoft already practically own sun after the settlement...

Who needs Linux?

[argent]

The cautionary tale is that NO ONE in Open Source can afford to allow splintering to destabilize the resilience and independence of Linux, Open Source/FLOSS and the movements behind them.

The Open Source movement doesn't even need Linux.

The biggest FOSS win of the past decade, Apple going to an OS operating system, didn't even involve Linux.

Re:Who needs Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear that!

Apple, wouldn't be alive today without the BSD license.

Keep the faith brother.

But, Doctor Evil, that already happened...

[argent]

Given the way MS operates, it doesn't make sense. Now to provide a better Unix on Windows environment (like better POSIX compliance, a version of BASH, etc) in the form of a good Services for Unix so that applications that are cross-platform can be run easily on Windows, that could help them (making it easy to run Unix/Linux/BSD programs on Windows opening up tons of applications and such). Out of the two, that would be FAR more likely.

It's so likely that it's actually happened.

Porting software to Interix is mostly just a matter of typing "./configure --options...; make; make install". It's got a kind of funky directory structure, with "C:" mapped to "/dev/fs/c" and so on, but it's far from the weirdest UNIX environment I've had to deal with.

OS Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

They allocate a billion dollars worth of programmers to shine and polish [The new OS] for a year, improving its compatibility with Windows Server technologies, donating parts of the Windows and Office code bases under the GPL and turning it into the world's best operating system

I doubt one year/billion would do it. How much have they spent so far to create the worst?

I for one, having used Office at the office, want nothing to do with its code base beyond a compatibility library for a different product whose stability, UI, performance, etc, aren't an example of how bad software can be and still sell with the right name on the box.

What if he is unable to return?

[Anonymous Coward]

> It would be interesting to know exactly what Daniel Robbins, and similar collegues, are doing. My own guess is that he's probably creating a superior and enhanced version of his Portage build system for Vista. And otherwise probably very little, apart from being kept safely out of circulation so that the Free World cannot make use of his talents.

What if he stays with M$ and, having finished his obligations, leaves, tries to return to Gentoo -- only to see NDAs he signed won't allow him to do it? Look at Mr. Kai-Fu Lee's case.

Explain to the shareholders

[thallgren]

Explain to the shareholders why even a single bit of the 2 only products that makes profit should be opened.

The only time opening anything would be motivated is when the products already or soon will be irrelevant due to open source competition.

Maybe but never under GPL

[DaedalusXXI]

Could be in an non free CDDL license escheme, with many parts of the OS closed. Windows gives to MS a big % of its profits, I don't see MS distributing windows for free, they could open the source but never resign to they Intellectual Property. Under a CDDL license escheme they could use the programmer's community to get new ideas (and pay for it) and debug the OS in a 100% Capitalist escheme.

Practical problems...

[Spoing]

Let's say the latest bit of speculation comes to pass. Let's say it happens this Monday shortly after Bill Gates and Steve Balmer both suffer from a concussion after knocking heads accidentially.

Two practical problems for Microsoft come to mind;

1. Time.

2. Trust.

I've left out the details on each of these since they should be obvious problems.

The name sets me on fire

[Anonymous Coward]

The announcement that the next version of Windows will be called Vista has singularly failed to set the computing world on fire.

Because the name isn't the important part. If you want to have such a reaction, you must do something significant to provoke it, and revealing the most superficial thing about the OS, its name, half of which was obvious already, that's not going to be enough.

This could happen...

[joedoc]

...and the result would be...MS-DOS 7.0. At least there wouldn't be a fight over which GUI to use.

That's one way to avoid profits.

[fmaxwell]

That would be a wonderful way for Microsoft to destroy its profit base.

Look how many Linux distro vendors ended up in horrible financial trouble. Mandrakesoft filed for bankruptcy. Others got gobbled up when they were bleeding red ink. And those were firms selling an open source OS written by others.

Imagine the payroll costs for a staff large enough to write an entire modern GUI-based OS. Now someone is sugggesting the MS incur that cost, give the source code away, and then try to compete with all of the firms that would be selling it, but that have not incurred the expense of writing it.

It's like suggesting that GM engineer an entire car, make the CAD files and CNC files available at no cost, and then try to sell the car. Within six months, the U.S. would be flooded with Chinese and Korean copies of the car which sold for far less -- since those firms had not borne the cost of the design, R&D, engineering, testing, etc.

Anyway, the scenario is kind of stupid.

[hummassa]

If Microsoft *really* wanted to have anything to do with Linux/BSDs, they would simply improve WINE. Hell, they could implement it fully, maintain it on sync with all their Win* APIs and, as there is at least one version of WINE that is BSD/MIT-licensed, they could simply run with it -- even charge a little bit for it.

The usual ...

[HarryZink]

Some guy who has no clue about what he wrotes about, speculates.

Fun.

> Could this ever happen?

No!

Worst nightmare

[martinultima]

The whole point of Linux is the freedom from everything else: Freedom to do whatever you want with it, freedom from Micro$oft, freedom to download and share with no copyright issues because it's free software. If Micro$oft went out and did this with Linux it would be my worst nightmare.

Now I don't say this unthinkingly. If they wanted to make a Linux distribution I wouldn't object at all, since publicity for Linux is publicity for Linux. However, if they were to pull the infamous "embrace, extend, extinguish" move like this article discusses it would be completely defeating the purpose of Linux as far as I'm concerned – and millions of other users too.

So if they ever wanted to start a Linux thing, fine, I'd be the first to apply for a job there. But if they wanted to completely take over Linux as we know it...

Evil doesn't compromise its principles

[Theovon]

If there's one thing that evil has, it's principles. Microsoft is dedicated to its way of doing things, and they'll never be pushed by the good guys into changing their ideals.

Why MS BSD is more likely

[jdfox]

Here's an alternative to the idea of "MS-Linux": how about "MS-BSD"?
Consider:
1) MS have been bashing the GPL in general, and Linux in particular, for a long time. It would be too much of a U-turn for them to suddenly embrace it.
2) As already noted above, MS have borrowed code from BSD before, e.g. for the Windows TCP/IP stack. Look at how many MS Knowledge Base articles reference BSD sockets.
In fact, MS have interbred with BSD at least twice. Not only did they use BSD as a source for their TCP/IP code, they bought Interix a while back, which is where Windows Services For Unix (SFU) comes from: Interix had a pretty well-defined porting route from BSD, and as a result the Windows Posix subsystem is mostly BSD tools ported to Interix.
3) MS bought the VM vendor Connectix in 2003. Most analysts concentrated on VM sales opportunities in server rooms, but it's worth noting that in addition to the "PC on PC" version of Virtual PC, there's version 7 of the Virtual PC product for MacOS X [microsoft.com]. MacOS X is BSD with a Mach kernel plus a very non-Win32 graphical layer. But porting VirtualPC for Windows to another BSD would give them an emulation layer for "legacy" Win32 apps on BSD.
4) The .Net "Shared Source" CLIis available from Microsoft for XP, FreeBSD and MacOS X.
5) Microsoft have never publicly bashed BSD, in fact they've even said nice things about it in public.

With an MS BSD, they'd have:
1) a rock-solid stable and secure OS, which is IMHO more secure out of the box than most Linux distros. I'm still a Linux user, because I know how to secure it and I prefer the GPL license. But then, they're not selling to me.
2) the prestige of becoming the world's largest Unix vendor overnight, with the ability to have pious pissing contests with Sun and IBM over whose OS is the most open
3) an emulation layer for Win32, allowing practically all existing Win32 apps to run unchanged, which they could bundle with the new OS
4) the BSD license, which they could proclaim is "more American!" and "less cancerous!" than the UnAmerican and Cancerous GPL
5) no legal hassles whatsoever from developing locked-up code on an Open Source base.

The name BSD is trademarked by U of C, so they'd need a new name.

How about "BSOD"? That's "O" for "Open".

Re:Why MS BSD is more likely

[cpghost]

how about "MS-BSD"?

IMHO you're right. That's much more realistic than "MS-GNU".

3) an emulation layer for Win32, allowing practically all existing Win32 apps to run unchanged, which they could bundle with the new OS

That's probably the catch. If such an emulation layer existed for BSD, what would prevent GNU/Linux hackers from writing a bsdlator, similar to BSD's linuxulator, so that all Win32 apps (which would actually be BSD compatible) will also run on Linux? That's not in Microsoft's best interest. Or is it?

How about "BSOD"? That's "O" for "Open".

LOL! But what about the new logo? Beastie with Windows wings?

Re:Why MS BSD is more likely

[jdfox]

what would prevent GNU/Linux hackers from writing a bsdlator, similar to BSD's linuxulator, so that all Win32 apps (which would actually be BSD compatible) will also run on Linux?

MS could simply keep the emulation layer (and other crucial parts) under a closed-source license, as Apple did with their Aqua GUI.
Reverse-engineering it would be very difficult, and prone to litigation. I wouldn't dream of even attempting it.

Note that I'm not endorsing any of this as an OS I would use: I value the freedom that GPL'd software provides. But it would be a viable business model. If you like that sort of thing. :)

But what about the new logo? Beastie with Windows wings?

Heh heh! Or Beastie in a polo shirt and glasses? :)

Wouldn't that billion be better spent...

[kevlar128]

Improving the process of developing software? Hardware has come a long way in 25 years, can we say the same for the tools and applications that give the hardware utility?

Re:This fits

[spectre_240sx]

You're forgetting one thing in your theory. Big blue has a lot invested in linux and they're definitely not going to just sit around and watch it bite the dust. We've already seen that they have teeth when it comes to this matter. Microsoft isn't stupid... in the legal area anyway. They know that a big brawl between them and IBM would be a pain in the ass. It just wouldn't be worth it in the end.

Yeah, and if I was the queen of England...

[MerlinTheWizard]

The only reason Microsoft would ever do that, would be if they wanted to try this path to kill OSS worldwide (which, granted, may be in their agenda). But I don't see this happening, because so far, OSS has been surviving thanks to the developers more so than thanks to the mooing end-users. Therefore, not the typical target for MS...

When will people get a clue? Most end-users are "customers", and customers don't care about OSS in general. They just want a product that works, sold to them at a "reasonable" price. MS knows how to do this, and their financial results show that. Why would they do any differently?

For the "freak" audience, there has been a project called ReactOS http://www.reactos.org/. I don't really see it having a future though. It's been there for years, isn't yet ready for any kind of serious use and is trying to "emulate" years old versions of Windows. It would take ages to become a viable alternative.

Anyway, other than to kill OSS, I really don't know what MS would earn from going Open Source. Open Source companies usually make their money on service, but MS is not providing any service other than selling software. Ok, it's not quite true, but I'm pretty sure they would go bankrupt pretty quickly if they concentrated on service only.

Not believeable....

[The Lynxpro]

I'd wager money that Microsoft bought up the rights to "Duke Nukem Forever" and actually cranked it out exclusively for the Xbox360/Live before it ever began any serious work on an internal version of BSD or Linux.

Furthermore, I doubt Microsoft has the foresight to create a *Marklar* version of the Windows GUI (and APIs) sitting atop an open source foundation. Windows Vista would have to be sinking faster than the Titanic in the open market before Bill G. turned the company around completely like he did when he realized how serious a threat Netscape was back a decade ago...

Re:This fits

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. And it's more than IBM, it's all the current users of Linux as well(think Google, Yahoo, the financial markets, various governments...)

They just can't get away with it at this point. The outcry would be so huge that all they would succeed in doing is in weakening software patents in the ensuing case of "Microsoft vs. the World."

doesn't work

[cahiha]

Those kinds of scenarios don't work. The GPL is quite clear: either people can use the code freely, or they can't use it at all.

So, if Microsoft asserts patent claims, then those will have to be tested in court. If they hold up, then RedHat can't ship until its code has been modified so it doesn't infringe anymore. Microsoft can't "indemnify" people for their own patents.

If, on the other hand, Microsoft buys RedHat, then they automatically give everybody they distribute Linux to a transferable license to all applicable patents.

As for Microsoft improving RedHat interoperability with Windows, great! Please do.

Lack of interest in new OS not because of Linux

[ElvenMonkey]

Like others here, I disagree with the BBC article, but for different reasons.

The lack of interest in Windows Vista is not because of Linux, linux still has a way to go to affect the average would-be-geek. Its certainly got a long way to go still to tempt most people away from Windows. (and I even like and use Linux)

The main reason I reckon there is a lack of interest in Windows Vista is because a) It offers nothing new, really; and b) XP works just fine thankyou.

What does Vista really offer us that makes it worthwhile me upgrading this Windows XP install? New GUI? Screw that, this one works fine thank you, and doesn't have heavy GPU/CPU usage to boot.... and so on and so forth.

There was a big interest in XP because it did offer something new. IT was a huge shift, going from an already overworked and unstable 9x kernel, onto the far superior NT kernel, which had already proven itself nicely under Win 2k on the desktop. I upgraded pretty damn fast to XP, and haven't looked back since, its more stable, takes more of a punishment, and when a program does crash it doesn't take the whole OS with it.

Vista brings nothing really worthwhile to the table. Its like the difference between Office 97 and Office 2000. Sure there are differences, but 90% of the users won't even notice them.

What a concept

[c1ay]

open bloatware

This model might just work, if done right.

[a100wwe]

I think I have to agree with this article somewhat it seems the new model could work. http://a100wwe.blogspot.com/2005/07/is-microsoft-f uture-of-open-source.html

I guess that makes you...

[Evanisincontrol]

...+5 Ignorant!

yeah, slave labor is the status quo.

[twitter]

What Microsoft should do is open up their software, and invest their money in more programmers, but not to do coding, to act as support for the rest of us who do the coding.

Ah, so you support the "free as in slave labor" open-source model?

That is the current "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine" M$ arrangement. With "Shared Source", they think they are open enough. As the likes of IBM, Correl, Netscape and other huge software houses have been unable to produce quality product or make money in the Winblows world, all you little guys can expect about the same from them.

The short answer to the question, "Could this ever happen?" is yes it can, but they won't and they will say they did anyway. It's all about selling the same old shit by saying whatever they think people want to hear. They have not changed in 20 years, despite people's happiest of fantasies.

Re:yeah, slave labor is the status quo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators: Please note that "twitter" is a known fanatical sycophant whose obnoxious offtopic rants are legend here on Slashdot. It doesn't matter what the topic is, he'll find a way to scrape in some pointless Microsoft bashing. While nobody expects us to love Microsoft in any way, his particularly tepid style of calling anyone he replies to "troll" or "liar" or "fanboy" because he happens to disagree with whatever they're saying is well documented and should not be rewarded. If anything, twitter is the type of person that should not be part of the open source/free software community. He is an anathema to all that is good about free software.

I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or Mepis or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.

If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check this post out. This is an article about email disclaimers. The parent of the post is complaining about the ads in the linked page and so on, and twitter actually goes off on a rant to blame it on Microsoft and recommend Lynx, because "is teh free".

Here's another. In this post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.

Here's that drive-by advocacy and FUD in motion: twitter goes on about some topic and then drops the usual "oh and M$ is teh evil" because "WMP phones home" or some such. Called on his FUD, he then claims that WMP stores every song and movie you've ever played in a file, somewhere. Pressed further, he just sort of slithers out of sight, his FUD-spreading complete. This is not about some Microsoft technology that nobody likes anyway; it's about lying for the sake of lying. Way too many of his posts are exactly like this one.

More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own. Or these two. Or this one. Or this one.

Still not convinced? This is what twitter considers "humour" while going about his daily "M$" routine.

M

If Hell Froze Over...

[snuf23]

Story at eleven!

It'll never happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this ever happen?

NO. It will never happen.

1. I have to deal with MS products everyday at work and I can tell by using them that MS programmers ARE INCAPABLE OF WRITING GOOD CODE. Even if you call it something else it will still have been written by Microsoft.

2. There is no monetary incentive to do this, no corporation (MS included) is going to give up anything they think they can get a buck for.

Could this ever happen?

[Master of Transhuman]

No.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

XFree86

[trigggl]

Since XFree86 is driving everyone off, MS might be able to buy them up cheap. Weren't they already moving away from GPL? Stranger things have happened.

Twitter: Life and times of a petulant cock-gobbler

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.