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

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: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: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.