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

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.

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.

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: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.

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.