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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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. "
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?
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.
Yeah, right.
Microsoft spends millions on a UI lab every year and the biggest innovation they can come up with is hiding Clippy.
This story reminds me of Conan's "If they mated"
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.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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...
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.
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.
Get your Unix fortune now!
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
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.
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
open bloatware