Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
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Why didn't you know?
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.
Infuriate left and right
turning it into the world's best operating system.' Could this ever happen?
Doubtful. Ask again later.
I would get laid..
never happening..
Well...sure! If I ever see a large order for hand-knit sweaters for damned souls I'll start expecting it.
While we are wishing, I want a money tree in the back yard that sheds $100 bills.
And world peace.
And a pony!
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.
No. Less return to the stockholders (not that they get many dividends anyway....)
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.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
Long answer?
No f'n way.
There, settled.
today is spelling optional day.
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.
Shya. And some dude screaming "developers" might fly out of my butt.
No. Next question.
Stupid like a fox!
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...
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
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.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
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
Business Voyeur
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!
A blog like any other.
No, you can't have a pony
From TFA
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.
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.
I like muppets.
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)
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
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.
Possible future quotes from one Mr. Ballmer:
.PRIVACY(TM) Security Extentions."
.PRIVACY(TM) Security Extentions standards will no longer work with Microsoft's ... blah, blah, blah..."
...you get the picture...
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
Exterminate: "Software not compatible with
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 $2000/seat upgrade to be spent to, again, just do today what worked fine yesterday. Firefox, Opera, Mozilla &etc are already here.
The F/OSS community already has a head start in making functional apps to do what needs doing regardless of OS, on existing hardware, using commodity protocols. Microsoft can never catch up trying to do that, because they have never been successful at doing that. They CHOSE not to be compatible, not to be frugal, not to play nice with others.
Microsoft as a company believes this is some kind of "race" that they have to "win", but while Microsoft spends bails of money "mobilizing their sales and marketing departments", F/OSS developers will continue to write good code.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Sure, it's GPL. You're free to clone (Anglican, Episcopal) or otherwise fork (other protestant) Micrix, but it's still Micrix.
"But that doesn't hurt Linux!" you cry. True. Why? Linus Torvalds accepts input and collaboration from users into the main kernel tree (the Bazaar). There is no need to fork.
Micrix would inspire fragmentation. Show me one example of fragmentation working well. I can think of several examples of it going wrong, right off the top of my head. (Linux distributions (there's no standard, scares people) and packaging (dpkg, rpm, tgz, Portage, Autopackage...) for example) Confusing end users is a certified Bad Thing(tm).
Oh, and no offense to anyone of any religion I may have offended. I don't think badly of any religion, they just seemed like a good way to extend the Cathedral and Bazaar metaphor. Oh, and kudos to Eric S. Raymond.
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
Could this ever happen?
God I hope not!!
Why does M$ 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 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.
Willie...
They've been much farther... Which may or may not mean anything :)
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
If my aunt had testicles, she'd be my uncle.
That should sum this article up.
What, you expected another no like the other 9,999 posts in here? :P
:)
Hey, at least I got to be original
... 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.
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.
.. 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..
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.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The usual tripe from BBC, I guess.
Fuck it
If my granny had wheals she would be a truck...
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.
And, so, like, if God and Superman got into a fight ....
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'.
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.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
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.
--
make install -not war
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.
In my opinion, Microsoft has never had the management quality necessary to do what the Slashdot story proposes.
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.
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?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
>>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 ?"
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
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.
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..
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?
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.
they wouldn't bump their ass.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
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.
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.
Well if it isn't the leader of the wiener patrol, boning up on his nerd lesson...
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.
Binny V A
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.
Yeah, right.
Microsoft spends millions on a UI lab every year and the biggest innovation they can come up with is hiding Clippy.
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.
Vote for Pedro
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?
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
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.
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.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
This story reminds me of Conan's "If they mated"
... 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.
what's with all these hypothetical non-news articles?
and not a project manager.
t h
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-Mon
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...
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.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
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?
... everything.
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
Damn it.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
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.
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
when me shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbert.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
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.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
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
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......
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.
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.
Not necessarily. Windows is STILL easier to install, most of the time.
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?
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
Mu.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
So, Microsoft buys out Red Hat for a huge amount of money....
... but Microsoft cannot do anything to the people who WANT to work on Linux.
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
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.
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
blog.sam.liddicott.com
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
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
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.
http://www.hawknest.com/
Get your Unix fortune now!
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.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
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.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
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.
... 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.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
see subject, says it all really
"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low
hopefully not, it's better for us if they keep it closed, we should concentrate on writing good free software. my 0.02cent
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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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.
The Penguin Producer
At least I could use KDE as an alternative DE to whatever MS builds on top of its linux kernel :)
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...
A computer is a tool, but I am not. I use Linux
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
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.
...and the result would be...MS-DOS 7.0. At least there wouldn't be a fight over which GUI to use.
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
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.
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.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Some guy who has no clue about what he wrotes about, speculates.
Fun.
> Could this ever happen?
No!
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.
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
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".
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?
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.
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.
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...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
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.
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.
"Joy is not in things; it is in us." Richard Wagner
open bloatware
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
...+5 Ignorant!
Story at eleven!
Sometimes my arms bend back.
No.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
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.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.