What if Windows Went Open Source?
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It is an interesting thought. Right now Microsoft is in a position where I don't think that it makes sense but I think that it is something that they need to consider for the near future. As Microsoft approaches a place where their operating system is no longer a specific competitive advantage moving to open source is a way to increase viability while lowering costs. They can still sell specific licenses and support while being open source. It would allow them to increase penetration very rapidly and to fix people lagging behind on updates, for the most part.
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Honestly, if Windows was open source, why would you run anything else? It is only because it is closed & non-free that others compete where they do. Not that I don't love a Linux desktop, I really do, but even I will concede that Windows would take over if they were to go to a FOSS + support model.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Windows would take over if they were to go to a FOSS + support model.
So much this.
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I don't see it becoming open source. But, I could see if free with paid support. especially with O365, Azure and office becoming the bulk of their income.
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I think that if they go free they will go open source. The only real value to them of not being open is in not being free. Open source brings so many benefits that it would be unlikely for them to avoid it.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Honestly, if Windows was open source, why would you run anything else? It is only because it is closed & non-free that others compete where they do. Not that I don't love a Linux desktop, I really do, but even I will concede that Windows would take over if they were to go to a FOSS + support model.
Why don't MS just push SLED and OpenSUSE more? They still own them(/most of them?), right?
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@nadnerB said:
Why don't MS just push SLED and OpenSUSE more? They still own them(/most of them?), right?
They've never owned them. You are thinking of Novell.
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Microsoft owned XENIX.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@nadnerB said:
Why don't MS just push SLED and OpenSUSE more? They still own them(/most of them?), right?
They've never owned them. You are thinking of Novell.
ooooh, righto. My bad.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Novell
Novell is very much a niche market it's the last thing I'd see becoming mainstream. Education tends to be their biggest users because it can be cheaper to use Novell GroupWise instead of AD and Exchange even with the discounts for education.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Microsoft owned XENIX.
That wasn't ever open source either.
Nope, but that was the UNIX that they owned.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Novell
Novell is very much a niche market it's the last thing I'd see becoming mainstream. Education tends to be their biggest users because it can be cheaper to use Novell GroupWise instead of AD and Exchange even with the discounts for education.
Novell was as mainstream as it got. It was the Microsoft of its day. It's long gone now. It's heyday was in the days before NT 4, so early 1990s.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Novell
Novell is very much a niche market it's the last thing I'd see becoming mainstream. Education tends to be their biggest users because it can be cheaper to use Novell GroupWise instead of AD and Exchange even with the discounts for education.
Novell was as mainstream as it got. It was the Microsoft of its day. It's long gone now. It's heyday was in the days before NT 4, so early 1990s.
Well yeah. The idea of Active Directory bascily came from Novell. Sadly Novell is slow to keep up.
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The best outcome I could see is that maybe more of the Windows API would be implemented in things like Wine and/or perhaps things like ReactOS would work out much better and/or one could add the API right into the OS, similar to how FreeBSD has Linux binary support, there could be Windows binary support as well.
I won't say it'll never happen, in the past Microsoft has released source code to very old products like MSDOS to MSDN members, so it could happen one day, but I imagine there are tons of patent and copy right issues involved, and likely licensing with other companies too that may not want their code distributed freely.
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@tonyshowoff said:
ReactOS would work out
Would there even be a point to ReactOS if Windows was open source? Seems about the only reason would be so they could say they finally did something besides an alpha.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@tonyshowoff said:
ReactOS would work out
Would there even be a point to ReactOS if Windows was open source? Seems about the only reason would be so they could say they finally did something besides an alpha.
Licensing, not just because I am certain Windows would not be released under GPL or anything close to that, but also because things within it are held patent by other people and may not even be available or carry other licensing schemes, and it'd be easier to just rewrite it into one thing, with one licensing scheme.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Well yeah. The idea of Active Directory bascily came from Novell. Sadly Novell is slow to keep up.
I'd agree with that. eDirectory was already pretty big when Microsoft decided to abandon SAM and move to AD. Although you have to consider that LDAP was already mature in the 1990s and available for free on Linux and BSD at that point, as was Kerberos. And that Microsoft had been doing a non-LDAP directory services (the infamous PDC / BDC system that seems to still be remembered by people not born yet when it went away) since 1993 and some quirky stuff even before that. So there were many years of solid Microsoft background before eDirectory came about and long, long before they upgraded to the more standard Active Directory system.
So eDirectory was a big inspiration, I think, but AD was coming down the pike with or without eDirectory, I think.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@tonyshowoff said:
ReactOS would work out
Would there even be a point to ReactOS if Windows was open source? Seems about the only reason would be so they could say they finally did something besides an alpha.
I'd guess it would go away. Or did it go away? What a pointless project. That thing was no closer to completion when I first installed it around 2ooo!!
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@tonyshowoff said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@tonyshowoff said:
ReactOS would work out
Would there even be a point to ReactOS if Windows was open source? Seems about the only reason would be so they could say they finally did something besides an alpha.
Licensing, not just because I am certain Windows would not be released under GPL or anything close to that, but also because things within it are held patent by other people and may not even be available or carry other licensing schemes, and it'd be easier to just rewrite it into one thing, with one licensing scheme.
Or, far better, that ReactOS and other projects like Wine could stop trying to rewrite the Windows code and could focus on replacing the components that Microsoft can't release. Piece by piece they could leverage the MS code to make the whole thing free. Much like the BSD projects did long ago to free UNIX from AT&T.
