
Microsoft: An Open Source Windows Is 'Definitely Possible' - Libertatea
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/microsoft-open-source-windows-definitely-possible/
======
antoncohen
That comment was taken out of context. Wired wrote an entire article about an
offhand remark.

I was at ChefConf, the comment was made during a panel discussion on open
source [1]. On the panel there was an engineer from Facebook, an IT Director
from Gap, and Mark Russinovich the CTO of Azure (note Azure, not Windows).

The conversation went something like this (paraphrasing):

Moderator: "Microsoft used to really suck, and they were really anti-open
source. But now they are open sourcing things like CLR on GitHub. I bet one
thing they will never open source is Windows."

Mark: "You never know, it's definitely possible. Crazy stuff happens."

Nothing more on the subject.

[1]
[https://chefconf2015a.sched.org/event/00710f4fed0e8b617aef56...](https://chefconf2015a.sched.org/event/00710f4fed0e8b617aef564a326e1b04#)

~~~
Random_BSD_Geek
I was also there, and I had a similar reaction to seeing the Wired article.
(Sensationalist, whole article written on a 30-second exchange, click-bait,
etc.)

That said, here's how I remember it:

1\. Metz: ... would Microsoft ever open source Windows?

2\. Crowd: Cheers. Applause. People shouting "Do it!"

3\. Russinovich: You never know, it's definitely possible. Crazy stuff
happens.

I found the middle part more interesting than anything else. It's a perilous
road to be sure but I think Microsoft may underestimate how much good
something like open sourcing Windows could do them.

I believe all the talks were filmed. Hopefully the video gets posted.

------
simula67
It is great to see Microsoft taking many steps to court hackers these days.
What would convince me they have turned the corner ?

1\. Windows playing well with other OS on my laptop. I updated my Windows 8 to
Windows 8.1 and I could no longer boot into Linux

2\. Dont use patents to stifle free software [1][2]

3\. Port Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office to Linux and offer immunity for
projects like Wine for reimplementing Windows API. Do not change APIs
unreasonably to sabotage these projects. Let Windows compete on its own merit
( speed, performance, stabilty, backwards compatibility, hackability etc ).

[1][http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2007/05/microsoft-235-pat...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2007/05/microsoft-235-patent-specific-patent-infringements-in-linux/)

[2][http://www.zdnet.com/article/310-microsoft-patents-used-
in-a...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/310-microsoft-patents-used-in-android-
licensing-agreements-revealed-by-chinese-gov/)

~~~
dghf
> Port Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office to Linux

Office maybe, but is there any demand for IE on Linux?

~~~
Zardoz84
Web development, but you can try to use a few virtual machines to run IE 11 &
9

~~~
dghf
Wouldn't you still need to use VMs even if IE were available for Linux? Aren't
sites supposed to be tested for browsers _and platforms_? E.g., a site may
show an undesired behaviour under Chrome for Windows but not under Chrome for
Linux (or vice-versa).

N.B. not a web dev, so please put me straight if I'm wrong.

------
jkot
There is already opensource Windows implementation: Wine. Perhaps they could
contribute there.

In the meantime Windows 10 certification no longer requires option to disable
secure boot. It might not be possible to install alternative operating systems
on new computers.

~~~
jordigh
I guess ReactOS is really more like an OS. Wine is just implementing the
Windows API, not a whole OS.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Even so, having used Play On Linux (I guess a "Wine fork") just to run Flash
on Linux where it wouldn't I've had positive results thus far.

ReactOS is nice, but it's a whole OS, and it's not necessarily the greatest
option just yet, plus you wouldn't get to run many Linux packages.

~~~
spystath
PlayOnLinux is just a (very useful) wrapper around wine. It uses stock wine
and you can even use multiple versions of wine with it.

------
faragon
"New Microsoft"? So why are they still bullying with patents against Android
device makers? (FAT file system, etc.)

~~~
DiabloD3
Because the patent system requires you to do so else you lose the patent.

The only solution to this is to stop having math and logic patents, which are
_already_ illegal under any sane interpretation of patent law: its Congress
and USPTO that continue allowing these un-patents to be issued.

~~~
dublinben
They could choose to license those patents for $1 in perpetuity if they
wanted. They choose to extract rent from other companies in the form of
expensive licensing agreements.

------
nailer
Nothing stopping them from doing a RHEL/CentOS setup - they open the code,
keep the trademarks to themselves, if you want 'Windows' you have to pay for
support.

People who don't want support are probably pirating Windows anyway.

~~~
raldu
The point about piracy is a strong enough reason for freeing the source code.
Why not just let people buy quality support instead of some blurb of binary
data? It also would be interesting to see how many different forks emerge out
of the original code base. A kind of fork comes to my mind is a specialized
Windows build for high performance gaming. Gamers would be dedicated enough to
build community support around their fork, then Microsoft can fight over a
monopoly on "better support" instead.

------
bonsai80
I thought April Fool's day was on Wednesday. Now I'm not sure which is pulling
my leg: Every single fake story from April 1, or this?

Interesting things sure have been going on since the LA Clippers changed
ownership!

------
chiph
One of the reasons why OS/2 wasn't open-sourced is that it contained several
3rd party libraries whose license wouldn't permit IBM to release their source,
and IBM didn't want to go to the trouble of getting releases from them.

I wonder if there's an issue like this that would preclude Microsoft from
releasing the source for Windows.

~~~
cesarb
They could always do a "partial open source", where DLLs with license problems
are kept closed-source. There's precedent for that; I recall a successful open
sourcing of an old game engine where the third-party audio library it used
couldn't be released.

In fact, I could argue they are already slowly going a "partial open source"
route, with their gradual open sourcing of parts of the dotnet runtime.

~~~
jebblue
Exactly, pieces that would be too difficult for them to Open Source I think
communities would gather to build those out to form a complete Open Source
Windows.

------
danbruc
I am not sure that I want Windows open sourced, there is actually some value
in not being open source. Having strong control over a system makes coherent
design decisions much easier, helps avoid fragmentation and simplifies
compatibility. You can see all this at play in the wild - hundreds of Linux
distributions, competing GUI frameworks or the relative ease of targeting a
limited number of gaming console hardware options or the pretty coherent
design of the .NET Framework.

There are real costs behind all that, when developing and maintaining several
competing options as well as when deciding between or targeting them. Easily
being able to look at the Windows source code would probably be a nice thing,
but I am not sure if I would value this high enough to risk ending with a
fragmented ecosystem a decade or so in the future.

~~~
dhimes
You can be open source and still maintain tight control over the system. Just
don't let anybody hack the official repo. Open source doesn't have to be open
development. It would be nice for third-party devs to be able to see the
source to develop better apps. That was the problem with MS historically- they
only allowed you certain hooks, and if you had a product they were interested
in competing with, your hooks never seemed to work quite properly.

Then their product would come out and work quite well with their system. IIRC,
an example of this was RealPlayer vs MediaPlayer.

Also, open source allows security audits and faster fixes, etc., at least in
principle.

~~~
danbruc
I have to disagree. There are two use cases, reading and changing the source.
When Microsoft only allows very limited contributions to the source it either
becomes effectively read-only or it will get forked. If it gets forked they
will sooner or later face the decision to either compromise on their design
decisions in order to maintain compatibility with forks or they start going
down the fragmentation road leading to compatibility issues.

Only reading the source is a different story. It should actually be a
exceptional use case, for example for debugging, but besides that you should
of course usually not worry about implementation details or even take
dependencies on them. And Microsoft's documentation of the public surface is
pretty good and therefore there is rarely a need to look at the source to
understand the functionality.

Finally at least for research purpose it has been possible for a long time to
obtain a copy of the source, not sure if this is possible or how hard it would
be for non-research purposes.

------
spdegabrielle
Of course it's possible. That doesn't mean it will happen.

------
mrfusion
I always wonder what would have happened if popular products had been open
sourced in their heyday. What if Windows had been open sourced around the time
Linux was growing up? Windows would be on every platform in the world.

What if Flash had been open sourced in the early 2000s? HTML5 would have never
been created.

In either case these companies would have been in charge of global standards.
I'm not sure if that would have been better for them or not?

------
hsnewman
Open source <> GPL or BSD license. Yes open sourcing would improve quality
with more eyes on the code, but Microsoft isn't going to give it away.

~~~
jordigh
Open source means free software means freedom.

Although in the past MSFT has used non-free, source-visible licenses, they
seem to understand very well what "open source" means. I don't think they use
their "shared source" licenses for new things. If they are serious about
freeing Windows, I'm sure they will do it under a free license.

Edit: Sigh, downvotes already, so here is your reminder of where open source
comes from and what it means:

[http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-
forgot...](http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-forgotten-
about-open-source/)

~~~
lotharbot
To give a concrete counterexample:

one of my favorite video games, Descent, has been open source for about 15
years. I have four different source ports on my system right now (d1x,
rebirth, retro, and d2x-xl) each of which is free to download, install, run,
and even modify. But some of the game assets (textures, ship polymodels) are
not free; you must buy a copy of the game [0] to acquire a license to those
asset files, or play using only the shareware assets [1].

[0]
[http://www.gog.com/game/descent_1_descent_2](http://www.gog.com/game/descent_1_descent_2)
or
[http://steamcommunity.com/app/273570](http://steamcommunity.com/app/273570)

[1] prepackaged with the rebirth/retro ports at
[http://descendentstudios.com/community/topic/1167-descent-
sh...](http://descendentstudios.com/community/topic/1167-descent-shareware-
unzip-and-play-works-on-windows-7-and-8/) , where they're being used as a
marketing tool for the currently-being-kickstarted Descent:Underground game at
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/descendentstudios/desce...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/descendentstudios/descent-
underground)

~~~
jordigh
That's not a counterexample. The engine is free software and open source.
There just isn't any free and open source material to run it on.

The same situation happens with Doom and Freedoom, but the existence or not of
Freedoom doesn't change whether the Doom engine itself is open source or free.

After all, people _are_ free to run the Doom engine on Freedoom. People are
also free to do the same for Descent, I assume. If the Descent license were to
forbid running Descent on your own custom-made game assets, then it would not
be open source nor free software.

~~~
jordigh
So I went to see what the license is. It says, "You are allowed to use this
code only for non-commercial, non-revenue generating purposes only."

Forbidding commercial use invalidates the Descent engine as being open source.
The Doom engine does not have this restriction.

~~~
lotharbot
Interesting. I had no idea "open source" meant so much more than "here's the
source code and it's OK to modify it".

[http://opensource.org/osd](http://opensource.org/osd)

~~~
jordigh
It's supposed to:

[http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-
forgot...](http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-forgotten-
about-open-source/)

------
bobajeff
If they open sourced something important to Windows like the NT Kernel or
DirectX then I'll believe they are serious about open sourcing it.

------
teamhappy
I _love_ how bad Microsoft has made OS X and Linux look recently.

They have a better UI than Debian/Ubuntu/whatever. They have better security
features than both OS X and Linux. If they get the open source thing right,
both OS X and Linux will (have to) improve as a direct result of that. Can't
lose.

// Did I miss something?

~~~
joshstrange
Is this missing a "/s" flag?

> They have a better UI than Debian/Ubuntu/whatever.

They _may_ beat out some linux distros but there are some VERY nice looking
linux distros and OS X blows Windows UI out of the water.

> They have better security features than both OS X and Linux.

Oh, give me a minute to wipe the tears out of my eyes, that was a good one.

> If they get the open source thing right, both OS X and Linux will (have to)
> improve as a direct result of that. Can't lose.

I venture a guess that OS X has more open source contributions than Windows
(or at least more contributions that I benefit from) but let's remember they
said 'Definitely Possible' not 'Coming Tomorrow'. Linux has been open source
from the start and OS X has deep roots in an open source OS as well. Why would
OS X or Linux "have to" improve, open sourcing shit doesn't make it any less
shitty....

> // Did I miss something?

Yes you missed a "/s" flag at the end of your post. Microsoft is not making
Linux or OS X "look bad" it's finally doing what every other kid on the block
has been doing for a while now. Let's not praise them for doing the right
thing when they should have been doing the right thing all along...

~~~
meddlepal
Daily Linux user here. I love the Windows 7 UI and would kill for the polish
and consistency of the Windows UI in say KDE. I own a Mac too and I wouldn't
even consider the OS X UI in the same league as Windows anymore, but it was
superior back when XP was relevant.

~~~
teamhappy
The things I like better in OS X aren't _really_ design features so much as,
well, I don't know what you call them. App bundles are so much better than
whatever MS has in store. The help in OS X is beautiful. I can still remember
the day I gave my mum an old MacBook and showed her that she can basically
search for a button she can't find in realtime and they'll point a huge arrow
at it. The Windows help (still is?) really just a huge manual.

~~~
Gigablah
> App bundles are so much better than whatever MS has in store

Hm? The dmg files that you have to double-click on, manually drag into your
app folder, then manually unmount from the desktop? Why do I still have to do
all that busywork in 2015?

~~~
teamhappy
App bundles are folders with a file extension and a binary at a specific
place. Folders that you can double click (and then some!) That's pretty great.

DMG files are a way to ship app bundles (or other files). They're basically
images with compression and checksumming added on top (I think). Images are
useful (compared to, say, a zip archive) because you can mount them (e.g.,
over a network). That's useful for all kinds of sysadmin-y things.
(Compression and checksumming are obviously useful as well.)

------
mkhpalm
It doesn't have to be open source but making "the garden" readily available
(dirt cheap or free) is Microsoft's only hope to avoid fading into oblivion on
windows products. OSX still requires expensive apple hardware... Which seems
like an opportunity to me.

~~~
walshemj
Have you tried to work with OSX with more than one or two macs and using OSX
server - it's hopeless basic functionality doesn't work.

------
giancarlostoro
While this would be great, I would love for Visual Studio, or an Open Source
alternative to come out that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Maybe for .NET
Core? It doesn't have to be as heavy weight as Visual Studio, but if it can
produce the same project types it would be amazing. I know we have
MonoDevelop, but that has to be the buggiest IDE I've used in a long time,
also there is definitely SharpDevelop, but it is Windows only. Heck, even if
Visual Studio came to Linux as a proprietary binary I would still appreciate
that. It's quite the product.

------
jebblue
As a side note, I let my finger rest on the keyboard and pressed some key, the
whole page went solid white and a massive edit cursor appeared.

------
UUMMUU
I know it won't but I would love it if they would make Spartan based off
Webkit. (Edit: or Gecko or something else with a bit of traction.) Edit 2: I
fear that if they start from scratch and put it on every Windows 10 machine
it's going to be feature incomplete from the start and force web developer
hacks just like IE does now.

~~~
seba_dos1
I wouldn't. There's already a threat of Webkit's monoculture on the web, we
don't need to make it worse. If you'd like to see Spartan based on some
already existing free software engine, then go for Gecko; however, another big
player on the engine market won't hurt, especially after Opera went Webkit
(well, Blink technically, but it's not a big difference yet).

~~~
UUMMUU
Good point. As a front end developer I just am still wary of what Microsoft
produces as a browser just because IE left such a bad taste in my mouth and I
really love what Opera did with it.

------
WDCDev
I get the feeling MS is heading towards Windows running on a MS Linux kernel
at some point.

An MS linux build, that supports .NET (CoreCLR) and a true cross platform
windowing library (WPF) would be serious force to contend with in both the
enterprise and consumer markets.

~~~
jeswin
I did think sometime back that this was a possibility, but not anymore.

\- Windows sells because it works with every hardware device ever made. Linux
does not even come close to that level of hardware support. There is no way
those drivers will run on MS Linux kernel.

\- None of Microsoft's top money making apps are built with .Net; Office,
Visual Studio or Sql Server are mostly C++. So it isn't as easy as porting
.Net over to Linux.

\- Windows Driver development tooling is way ahead of Linux. So while we all
love Linux, throwing away the entire Windows kernel is a bad idea.

\- The Windows NT kernel is not an awkward piece of engineering. While
different from the *nix, it is actually quite respectable.

\- Add: MS mobile device strategy too is based on the NT kernel. They are not
going to be an Android theme.

What they really wanna do is make windows more text-shell friendly, and
perhaps Open Source the NT kernel. But more than anything else, I just want
Microsoft to switch sides when it comes to Patents and IP extortion.

~~~
jebblue
>> Windows sells because it works with every hardware device ever made. Linux
does not even come close to that level of hardware support.

In my own experience on over a dozen computers since 2000 when I started to
get serious about Linux and especially the past 7 to 8 years...Linux driver
support exceeds Windows.

~~~
StillBored
Well, i'm not so lucky.

With windows, its likely the base OS may not even be able to install on a
piece of hardware without a driver update CD, but the driver support is
fantastic. Its possible to run XP on a lot of modern hardware because
companies like nvidia continue to make drivers for XP. That is not possible
with any linux distribution from that time frame.

The opposite also exists, I have a baytrail tablet I picked up over Christmas.
It runs win8.1 just fine, and will sort of boot the latest bleeding edge
ubuntu, but the wifi still doesn't work (as of a couple weeks ago), nor does
the SD controller, and a few other things are suboptimal.

There are also whole product lines that still don't work in linux (see the
USB3 displaylink based products) even years after their initial release.

Plus, linux tends to put users in a sticky situation. For example at work I
have a fairly recent intel based platform, that doesn't work 100% in the older
(still supported) SLES environment we use by default. That is because the
drivers need to be backported by SUSE and they aren't exactly on the ball
about it (same thing for the LTS releases of ubuntu).

I'm a pretty strong believer that linux needs to decouple the drivers from the
core kernel. I don't necessarily want to upgrade my whole OS platform just
because I got a new piece of hardware. This is especially true on stable
platforms. Thankfully companies like emulex do a good job of providing two
dozen different drivers for different versions of linux. They and a few other
companies are the exception not the rule.

------
farresito
I'm really liking the way Microsoft is going. While there are quite a lot of
things they need to improve on, they are becoming more and more open, and I
have a feeling we will eventually see an open source Windows version.

------
yodsanklai
I don't know if they still do it, but some time ago, Microsoft used to "lend"
Windows source code to some academics that worked on operating systems.

~~~
venomsnake
The code is not that valuable anyway. No one will be able to steal IP from
them, very few people will have the acumen to build their distro, so they have
nothing to lose.

And in the case that people find innovative uses for windows - hey - pay up.

------
ChikkaChiChi
It is also definitely possible that my keyboard will pass through my desk
while I am typing this comment.

Possibility and probability are two completely different things.

------
jebblue
I never thought I'd read Microsoft thinking about Open Sourcing Windows. I'd
consider getting back into Microsoft technologies if they did it.

------
snarfy
I don't want Windows. I just want Visual Studio.

~~~
vanattab
Visual studio with the vsVim plugin is a pleasure to use.

------
higherpurpose
Put up or shut up?

------
wantab
I think this is positively maybe almost definitely possible.

We've heard these vaporware statements from Microsoft in the past. I'm used to
them. I guess they're starting them up again.

As a reminder, "open source" doesn't mean free, in case anyone goes off on
that tangent.

~~~
jordigh
> As a reminder, "open source" doesn't mean free, in case anyone goes off on
> that tangent.

As a reminder, yes it does:

[https://lists.debian.org/debian-
devel/1999/02/msg01641.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian-
devel/1999/02/msg01641.html)

I don't know where people got the idea that open source is not a synonym for
free software. It was always meant to be a synonym.

[http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-
forgot...](http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-forgotten-
about-open-source/)

I'm sure Microsoft understands what open source means, because they don't call
their source-visible licenses "open source". "Shared source" is the term they
invented for their non-free, source-visible licenses. If they are talking
about open source in an article, I do think they really do mean open source.

~~~
castratikron
>I don't know where people got the idea that open source is not a synonym for
free software. It was always meant to be a synonym.

Probably from rms himself.

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-
point....](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html)

~~~
jordigh
He also says it's a synonym:

    
    
       “Free software.” “Open source.” If it's the same software, does it 
       matter which name you use?
    

It refers to the same software, but one emphasises one part or another. It's
like saying "developing country" to emphasise that supposedly it's working on
improving or "third world country" to emphasise that it's not part of the two
big warring Cold-war era groups, but the two terms refer to the same thing.

------
Avalaxy
"Earlier this year, Microsoft open sourced a tool called .NET, a popular way
of building online applications, and the hope is that this will expand the
tool’s reach. "

Shivers...

~~~
vanattab
Why the shivers? Have you used .NET? I my experience visual studios + .net
framework is a pleasure to work with.

~~~
Avalaxy
That was not my point, I'm a fulltime .NET dev and love it. My point was they
way they described it as a "tool" instead of a framework.

I don't get why this has to be downvoted.

~~~
dragonwriter
A framework is a kind of tool, and Wired isn't focussed on an audience of
developers and people for whom the particular type of tool ("framework") would
be all that meaningful (and those for whome it would be already know what .NET
is, and wouldn't be hurt by the less-specific description.)

------
bayesianhorse
As far as I understand it, the business case for not open sourcing Windows is
loosing merit. Linux is a very advanced operating system, in many ways
surpassing current Windows versions - technically speaking.

The problem for Windows seems to be that it has trouble leaving the desktop
and its particular server market. Windows-based mobile devices are struggling,
and pricing/enforcing Windows licenses for IoT devices would be a tough
problem. Pay for a Windows 10 license for a Raspberry Pi? I don't see that as
a mass market either.

