There is an important point that you miss. Besides the difficulty of enforcing Copyrights on Software, which provides a motivation to not release source code. Microsoft almost assuredly considers its implementation the Windows OS to be a trade secret. And in order to keep trade secret status for their implementation they have to keep it a secret. Whatever your feelings of the Company or their products they do have a right to protect their IP, which they have spent huge amounts of money developing.
Slashdot Mirror
There is an important point that you miss. Besides the difficulty of enforcing Copyrights on Software, which provides a motivation to not release source code. Microsoft almost assuredly considers its implementation the Windows OS to be a trade secret. And in order to keep trade secret status for their implementation they have to keep it a secret. Whatever your feelings of the Company or their products they do have a right to protect their IP, which they have spent huge amounts of money developing.
Chris Dickens