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If Microsoft Went Open Source

Posted by Zonk on from the cold-day-in-hell dept.

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?

4 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. been there... by William+Robinson · · Score: 0, Redundant

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

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    hilarious
  2. Hmm.. by highwind81 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Could this ever happen?

    no.

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    ------ http://timothylive.net
  3. polishing a turd by l8apex · · Score: 0, Redundant

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

  4. Re:Summary. by HiThere · · Score: 1, Redundant

    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.

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    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.