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Microsoft Engineer: Open Source Windows Is 'Definitely Possible' 303

Posted by Soulskill from the cats-and-dogs-living-together dept.
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."
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Microsoft Engineer: Open Source Windows Is 'Definitely Possible' More

Microsoft Engineer: Open Source Windows Is 'Definitely Possible'

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  • If they're using Linux technologies that we can't play with,

    Anyone can "play with" Linux.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      His point being that to the extent that 'Open Source' plays a fundamental role in a large client's It strategy, the classic MS moves aren't going to give them access to those markets. This has more relevance to products like Office, Visual Studio, Azure, and so on and less about Windows itself really.

      That said, it's generally less about the freedom and more about preferred software behavior and/or cheaper. Stamping 'open source' on .Net isn't going to change the fortunes much for better or worse for those

      • Or they can pull and apple / playstation 4 and go with FreeBSD.

        • Re:Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Junta ( 36770 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @12:21PM (#49398361)

          Which won't by them anything.. They throw out their singular primary advantage (backwards compatibily for decades of application) for.... well actually not much of anything. The Linux kernel can do tricks that Windows kernel cannot, but in the scheme of things not something that will boost MS revenue. The BSD kernels are already roughly at the same functional level, so no new function from that area.

          It made sense for Apple because they had only their classic OS which was clearly ill-equipped in fundamental ways and it let them skip the investment of doing it from scratch. MS had already spent that money, so they don't get to skip anything.

          If MS started doing a linux distro, it probably would do more harm than good. Distrusted by the target market with a value add that would probably amount to making it easier to manage linux *like* windows, but at that point why not just run Windows? I'd personally be more swayed by the ability to muck about with Windows in the same style as linux, but I recognize that would be a bad idea for Windows.

    • Come on, do better than that. Of course any individual can play with Linux all they want. We're not talking individual here. We're talking a behemoth corporation with long standing corporate policies and a legal department dictating licensing on what the collective can use on a day to day basis with an auditing department to enforce them and an onsite security team to give personal escort service to those who break those policies. It's highly doubtful that they would have authorization to "play" with Lin

      • In the 3 years I've worked here, we've lost 2 employees this way.

        Well, if you haven't noticed yet, your employer's doing something wrong. You need to give developers a bit more freedom if you want decent bits.

        • Name one long standing large company where I can install arbitrary software on a whim on company owned hardware without at least getting a dirty look from auditing? There's freedom, then there's being an idjit. Personally, I'd rather use the considerable income I get from following the company's rules to be able to buy all the toys I want to use in my time that's not bought and paid for by the company. Maybe sometime soon I'll have enough extra money from playing by someone else's rules that I can stop d

          • Re:Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Junta ( 36770 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @12:28PM (#49398411)

            No company permits 'arbitrary' software. Many companies do trust the employees to understand licensing and 'play with' free software. They generally have an education course on how to find licensing terms and to read the license more deeply for signs of 'commercial use clauses' and what GPL means versus BSD and so on and so forth.

            IBM doesn't bat an eye when if an employee puts Fedora on a company asset. They have your ass if you put any open source code into any product without legal review, and also if you use a partner's source code and contribute anything open source based on that. So yes, a long standing large company that is very very very careful about software licensing will go along with it.

            Not all 'playing with' is for personal gain. Some of it enables advancing your companies agenda/saving costs/etc. I would not use my personal resources for exploring things that would advance my company without much gratification for me on a personal level.

          • Re: Why not? (Score:4, Informative)

            by spongman ( 182339 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @12:35PM (#49398465)

            I dual-booted slackware with Linux 0.97-pl2 on my testing machine at Microsoft, and nobody gave a damn.

  • BWAH HA HA HA HA HA (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrflash818 ( 226638 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @09:42AM (#49397259) Homepage Journal

    *thud*

    -- The Princess Bride

  • It was inevitible (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @09:43AM (#49397263)
    The concept of making money by selling an operating system is a 1990's idea.

    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fustakrakich ( 1673220 )

      embrace extend extinguish

      • Re:It was inevitible (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @10:38AM (#49397617)

        embrace extend extinguish

        Yeah, that worked at one time. But as Microsoft has become just another player, playing nice full time might just be a better way.

        The days of people buying new computers every two years are over, except for a few. The whole operating system paradigm has shifted so much that trying to rely on people constantly upgrading it just doesn't work any more. Especially since the Microsoft world has been bred towards cheapness. There are a lot of computers out there running XP yet, on functioning computers, and doing work. That's insane, but that's the crop you get when people are inculcated to avoid Apple because you might have to pay a little more. The best example I ever saw was in a local netnews for sale group when a full blown physical threat bitchwar broke out over a 5 cent difference in price.

        Then there is the matter of Pressure to give something new to people when you charge them for OS upgrades. I suspect that the ribbon and especially metro would never have seen the light of day if Microsoft didn't feel the need to justify somechangeanychange worldview. Which is a dangerous thing once you get a lot of people using your system.

        Apple, for all of the changes it has incorporated over the years, if you set a person down who was using an old Toaster Mac from the 90's at a computer running Yosemite, they would be able to get around and do their work. You cannot say the same for Windows 3.1 or 95 to W8. Considering that Apple had switched processors and even the underlying system base it's even a better example. And if for some reason, they really wanted the spawn of hell metro interface, Launchpad is there, just a click away, no OS modifications or third party software needed.

        But I digress. Going from their let's make money on the OS to a more sustainable business model is a good thing. I like it. I think it will help them in the long run, where they can get people to buy software to do stuff with, stuff that if you want to do it, you go to Microsoft to get it.

        • You cannot say the same for Windows 3.1 or 95 to W8.

          Absolutely not true. You can make the desktop the default when you log in instead of that gimpy tile interface.

          • You cannot say the same for Windows 3.1 or 95 to W8.

            Absolutely not true. You can make the desktop the default when you log in instead of that gimpy tile interface.

            You know, I've heard this one a lot here on slashdot. Problem is, there are things you have to go to metro for. like metro apps. And you can't put metro apps to the desktop.

      • Get them to use it under a true open source license, and then sue them for patent infringement! It may turn out to be a growth industry, or at the very least a new business model for some. But one would have to choose an open source license that doesn't deal with the subject of patents.

    • The concept of making money by selling an operating system is a 1990's idea. It made Microsoft a lot of money at one time...

      The question in my mind is whether there is enough money in the "other services" to support the huge, bloated corporation we know as Microsoft?

      .

      If I were a Microsoft employee, I'd begin looking to restart my career somewhere else.....

      • Re:It was inevitible (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Zerth ( 26112 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @10:37AM (#49397601)

        Right now they could just rename that piece of cardboard/sticker they give you from "Operating System License" to "Support Customer Number" and every company I have worked for would keep on buying, with nothing else changing.

      • The question in my mind is whether there is enough money in the "other services" to support the huge, bloated corporation we know as Microsoft?

        It will require a massive undertaking to slow,stop,and turn around that ship. But I don't think there is much choice. I look at Windows 8 as the last gasp of the old paradigm. And it failed miserably, nearly destroying the PC market along with it.

        There are just too many other choices today. ChromeOS for the casual user, at a price point that gets people to try one just on a lark. The Unix-like OS', Linux and OS X, which function very well. Even Microsoft Office, which I haven't used since about a year aft

    • Interesting that Bill Gates' friend Warren Buffett came to the same conclusion back in the 1990s, and that was why he said he wouldn't invest in MS, as he could see the long term profit in selling OS software.

    • What Ive been hoping for is that they would actually go the other way...

      For the past 20 years they have been selling "upgrades" to the interface and oh-by-the-way here are some changes to the OS.
      If they unlinked the two they could license the OS, an interface API and a bare bones default Windows interface.

      There was a time when the idea of Apple using the same Intel processors as most PCs would have been inconceivable. Its not that far of a stretch to think that Apple would have gone a step further and used

    • Re:It was inevitible (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Junta ( 36770 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @10:20AM (#49397463)

      The concept of making money by selling an operating system is a 1990's idea. It made Microsoft a lot of money at one time

      That 'one time' is basically from their inception to today. MS revenue in the industry is only behind Apple and IBM. Their biggest money makers continue to be Windows and Office. Windows 8.1, generally cited as MS's failure and antiquated approach compared to Apple 'giving away' OSX (including updates with hardware purchase really) has a larger market share than all the other desktop platforms combined, despite those being 'free' and Windows costing money. Their 'failure' is massively more successful than the competition.

      I'm stuck using it due to work and get pissed at it so much and really appreciate using a Linux desktop platform more, but I'm not so deluded as to ignore the market realities. MS isn't going to open source windows (in fact it really can't, there's too much third party cross-licensing deals) and it won't even 'give it away' except under confusing situations that ensure their bread and butter revenue source is protected (for the 'life of the product', not clarifying speculation that they are going subscription, pirates get free upgrade, but still not 'genuine', so really nothing changed).

      • That 'one time' is basically from their inception to today. MS revenue in the industry is only behind Apple and IBM. Their biggest money makers continue to be Windows and Office. Windows 8.1, generally cited as MS's failure and antiquated approach compared to Apple 'giving away' OSX (including updates with hardware purchase really) has a larger market share than all the other desktop platforms combined, despite those being 'free' and Windows costing money.

        Congratulations on taking years of history and condensing everything into one moment in time - the present.

        Do you believe that since Microsoft is at present, the big dog, that it was and always will be, world without end, amen? Because your history shuffle indicates that you do. Microsoft's ascendency was based upon computers invading the coprorate environment, and growth like that isn't going to happen again. Those heady years where new and better computers and OS' were coming out and the advantages outw

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      If you think that Microsoft makes most of it's money from selling OS's, then you're woefully uninformed. I spend a lot of money with Microsoft, and it's not on OS's.

      • If you think that Microsoft makes most of it's money from selling OS's, then you're woefully uninformed. I spend a lot of money with Microsoft, and it's not on OS's.

        Pay attention. Could you show me where I wrote anything like that?

        Try this one on. If Microsoft gives it's OS away for free, then people are likely to spend more on those Microsoft products that you use. That make sense muchacho?

  • Engineers will say what engineers will say... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nrrqshrr ( 1879148 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @09:47AM (#49397285)
    Remember that part when Microsoft announced that there will be free upgrades to windows 10 for everyone, even pirated copies, and then boom, the next day some "clarifications" about the legitimacy of these upgrades were released? Same thing here.
    The engi will say whatever he wants, the final decision is taken by accounting/legal departments and, yeah, they *love* open source stuff...

  • A non story... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @09:56AM (#49397337)

    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.

    • Apple built OS X upon FreeBSD

      Sony built the playstation 4 upon BSD.

      Those are both pretty big players. Don't be surprised if someone builds an Android-compatible smartphone atop FreeBSD, just to get away from Google's stranglehold.

  • MS versus Telescreens ? (Score:3)

    by jabberw0k ( 62554 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @09:57AM (#49397341) Homepage Journal
    In a world where everyone is practically required to carry a telescreen which tracks them at all times, which spouts approved government "Amber Alerts" and panicky National Security Alarms -- devices which you can be imprisoned for "jailbreaking" -- will Microsoft become the lesser of the evils?

  • Maybe (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by WoodburyMan ( 1288090 )
    A year ago... maybe two, there's no way I would even think of believing this. Given the steps Microsoft has taken in the last 1-2 years, it may be something that's possible. First they offered major OS updates for free, first Windows 8 > Windows 8.1. Then next, Windows 10 for free for current Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 users. Then, on top of that, the open sourcing of .Net. Given Apple's "free" offerings, they were kind of forced to do this. The open sourcing of .Net was a surprise to me. Makes me think maybe

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by stooo ( 2202012 )

      >> The open sourcing of .Net was a surprise to me.
      it's not open source. You're basically not allowed to do anything with the source other cthan the use MS defined. I would rather call that "available source"

  • Open? (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @10:02AM (#49397377)

    Under which license? Is Microsoft going to allow forks and multiple Windows distros?

    And how long before Poettering notices and ports systemd to Windows?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fisted ( 2295862 )

      And how long before Poettering notices and ports systemd to Windows?

      He probably anticipated it years ago and already has a release-grade(*) windows port of systemd sitting around in his repo.

      (*) i.e. kinda sorta works on his platform, for his use case, with pre-sanitized input, unless bad luck.

    • Poettering has declared he will not port systemd to any other operating system, including OpenBSD, and furthermore, if someone does port it, he will not merge those changes. He refuses to do anything that will make his code less pretty. Here is what he says: [google.com]

      For us having a simple design and a simple code base is a lot more important than trying to accommodate for distros that want to combine everything with everything else. I understand that that is what matters to many Debian people, but it's admittedly not a priority for us.

      And this one [slashdot.org]:

      I have no plans porting it to other kernels, and I will not merge any such patches........Quite frankly, I'd like to question [cross-platform compatibility]. In the light of GNOME OS I think we need to ask ourselves the question if we do ourselves any good if we continue to support all kinds of kernels that simply cannot keep up with Linux anymore.

      Incidentally, Wayland has picked up some dependencies on systemd, I didn't realize that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        I'm going to watch what Poettering and his minions do, not what they say.

        For us having a simple design and a simple code base is a lot more important than trying to accommodate for distros that want to combine everything with everything else. I understand that that is what matters to many Debian people, but it's admittedly not a priority for us.

        And yet one of the major gripes about systemd is that it does exactly what Lennart says he doesn't want to do. It isn't a simple design, what with its everything including the kitchen sink squeezed in. And the cross dependencies between systemd, Gnome, Wayland (and who knows what else) violate the design philosophy of loose coupling*. If I wanted to run Windows, I would.

        *For what appears to be no other reason than producing lock-in to

        • Interestingly, Poettering benefited from the lack of lock-in when he wrote systemd, you might like this quote: [0pointer.de]

          Right now systemd can already be used as a drop-in replacement for Upstart and sysvinit (at least as long as there aren't too many native upstart services yet. Thankfully most distributions don't carry too many native Upstart services yet.)

          Somehow he didn't recognize that "easy to replace" is a virtue of good software design, even though he benefited from it.

  • Just give the source code to the ReactOS project. Let them take over so Microsoft can concentrate on Office.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @10:15AM (#49397433)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Sysinternals (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dwedit ( 232252 ) on Friday April 03, 2015 @10:21AM (#49397477) Homepage

    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.

  • The latest windows is so buggy the risk of giving away the source code might be outweighed by the idea of thousands of developers fixing all those bugs for free. Plus we'll file patent lawsuits against anyone who tries to use a not-our version commercially.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PRMan ( 959735 )
      I don't find Windows 10 to be buggy at all anymore. The latest version is completely solid.

  • 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.

    well I happen to work in a Microsoft "ecosystem" and this is not what I see. What Microsoft is doing is a move toward the freemium model that is so popular with everything mobile and non-x86. Freeware instead of licenses and ad hoc purchases of "Support" don't pay the rent, there's plenty of evidence for that in Linux-based software that never goes from "project" to "product"...

    Today you can use the Office applications over the web for free but if you want the more advanced parts, get the credit card ready

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bazorg ( 911295 )

      If Windows with Bing is a sign of things to come is that there will be a subscription based offering for people who don't get Windows with a new PC. I'd be interested in seeing this go ahead, at the very least to see what's so difficult about getting Windows (and x86 Firefox) on my £99 Hudl2 tablet.

      I pressed submit too soon, meant to add that the truly interesting thing will be when Windows with Bing is available in retail and Apple says NOPE, our iPads are off-limits.

  • [Free windows would 'lift them up' to use other MS stuff] If they’re using Linux technologies that we can’t play with, they can’t be a customer of ours

    So they have no intention of ever open sourcing anything but Windows or abandoning the closed source business model. I thought they were going to try and make money off the cloud and support of Windows.

  • Or the usual smoke and mirrors? Look at some of their current "open source" licenses and terms, then you be the judge.

  • >> they can't be a customer of ours

    They very much can be. They just can't be customers of _Windows_. Mark is confusing Windows with Microsoft again. They can be customers of Azure, they can be customers of Office, they can be customers of SQL Server. I mean, just about any Microsoft product can run (and therefore can be sold) on Linux just fine. Except for Windows itself.

    Particularly for server products, I just don't get why Microsoft insists on offering them only on Windows. Seems like at some point

  • Microsoft could continue to turn a profit on licensing like they do now with open source clauses. Hypothetically, there isn't a problem with that if they carried some BSD-like license for their OS. But, could you imagine the turmoil that would ensue? I can see it now: Dell PC's no longer ship with Windows, but Dell Workstation Foundation. Its like Windows, but with all the things they don't want you to have stripped out and replaced with their own proprietary spin. Who needs services when you have Dell work

  • While I wasn't at ChefConf this year, I know several people who attended this discussion. By selective quoting, the 'reporter' has completely misrepresented the statement.

    The contextually mangled quote used in the article: "“t’s definitely possible,” Russinovich says. “It’s a new Microsoft.”

    THe actual quote as far as I can determine: "You never know, it's definitely possible. Crazy stuff happens."

    No OSS was harmed in the making of this post.

  • Awesome! Now we're talking...Lets start by removing all resemblances of the hideous Metro UI (either in 8, 8.1 OR 10) as well as the incredibly stupid idea of flattening everything (that includes adding back drop shadows, removing lame 2D MSPAINT like icons and adding back gradients on buttons). Even with the offer of free Windows 10 on the horizon I will NOT be downgrading my computing experience any further until this 2D Metro crap fad passes.

  • Fork it. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by roc97007 ( 608802 )

    Let's fork Windows, leaving an official for-pay version, and a separate, open source version using the Linux model. Microsoft could then vet the best of the contributions and fold them back into the closed, for-pay product. Enterprise customers would continue to purchase the official product from Microsoft, because of the perception that contracts for technical support are important, with the majority of new development being taken over by geeks like us.

    Pragmatically, an open source fork would be a strong

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