Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Engineer: Open Source Windows Is 'Definitely Possible'
An anonymous reader writes: Speaking at ChefCon, Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich talked briefly about the prospect of some or all of Windows going open source. He said, "It's definitely possible. It's a new Microsoft." Russinovich acknowledged the reality that most developers and IT workers have embraced open source software to run some or all of their machines, and that means Microsoft needs to adapt. He also noted that Microsoft is beginning to adopt a strategy familiar to open source vendors: give away the software, and then sell support and related products. "It lifts them up and makes them available for our other offerings, where otherwise they might not be. If they're using Linux technologies that we can't play with, they can't be a customer of ours."
*thud*
-- The Princess Bride
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
It made Microsoft a lot of money at one time, but they are simply not the only game in town, and the software has matured enough that the concept of making hwolesale changes in look and feel both isn't enough, and too much to handle at the same time.
I get all my Operating systems free already, so using a Microsoft one is just an added and sometimes unpleasant expense.
Welcome to 2015 Microsoft, you might actually like it and do well here.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Steve Ballmer warned us that Linux was a cancer. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Now the mothership itself in infected. Open source??? OMG. But really, if real programmers ever got their hands on Windows under a GPL, they would just strip out anything of value and add it to Linux. Really.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
MS has been doing a good job lately of saying things that are obviously non-committal (or seemingly committal but actually not when someone digs in and notes a complication and MS won't clarify).
This one goes extra far by conflating Linux open source and how it functions and therefore if Windows were open source, then migration from Linux would be a no-brainer. Of course without promising that but getting that into the 'hearts and minds'.
Of course, I have a hard time blaming them for this. The tech media has all but written eulogies for Windows and have painted MS as a company that is only barely relevant by way of Azure and related cloud services. Despite the fact that they earn about twice as much revenue as Google and their biggest money makers are *still* Windows and Office (by revenue and by an even wider margin by profit). However the story that MS is still one of the biggest tech companies and mostly because of the same stuff that made them big 20 years ago isn't such a sexy story. The revenue and margin on traditional Windows and Office are staggering. Traditional Office revenue dwarfs Office 365 and Office 365 is lower margin.
In short, no they won't be ditching their cash cow to compete with the open source vendors with combined revenue that doesn't match Microsoft's only income. There's two tech companies with more revenue than Microsoft, and neither builds the meat of their business on open source (IBM and Apple). Yes they will continue to feed the media confusing rhetoric to help create false impressions to counteract the media's love of inventive explanations and extrapolation. The biggest risk to MS as a business is getting too caught up in their own smokescreen (e.g. Windows 8 Metro UI).
Of course, I'd rather have less Microsoft in my life, but the likely candidates (ChromeOS, IOS and Android) are not what I would consider an improvement. OSX and Linux desktop distributions I find nice enough, but there's no signs of those superseding Windows.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
What a fellow says at a technical conference and the gilded intent of a multinational corporation couldnt be further from each other. Microsoft has proven in the past that it prefers to milk open source with a blend of strategic patent litigation against manufacturers, not participate. Its embrace-extend attempt with 3 of its own open source licenses fell flat with the usual day-late-dollar-short microsoft approach to competing in the marketplace, but that was partly because Redmond didnt understand the whole point. Open source was a categorical departure from microsofts business model, it was a cathartic rebellion from coders who were sick of a cloistered elite being given access to the source. It was an uprising against the idea of software as service only.
so as far as this opinion is concerned, it boils down to an obvious assumption. As the turd swirls the drain anything is possible. Windows could become open source, or it could become cloud, or it could become freeware, but as Microsoft sees fit to drive it Windows has only become more aggravating and less relevant. Nowhere is this truer than in XBox, where the successful game console has in true Redmond fashion been hobbled to the uncertain, haggared burro known as Windows 10 in a desperate attempt to pre-emptively save it. The real question is between surface, phone, azure, and the microsoft market how much more XBox cash can microsoft use as a salve for products they dont care to change and insist must be a part of a market that doesnt need them
Good people go to bed earlier.
Mark Russinovich is the guy who made the Sysinternals suite of programs, which are highly valuable utilities for your system. I've gotten great use out of Filemon and Procmon so many times.