Microsoft Engineer: Open Source Windows Is 'Definitely Possible' 303
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."
It was inevitible (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Engineers will say what engineers will say... (Score:3, Insightful)
The engi will say whatever he wants, the final decision is taken by accounting/legal departments and, yeah, they *love* open source stuff...
It's that damn cancer! (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve Ballmer warned us that Linux was a cancer. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk]
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.
A non story... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:It was inevitible (Score:3, Insightful)
embrace extend extinguish
Re:It was inevitible (Score:4, Insightful)
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).
Sysinternals (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:It was inevitible (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:It's that damn cancer! (Score:3, Insightful)
The GPL is essentially cancer for software licenses and that is by design.
Re:It's that damn cancer! (Score:5, Insightful)
Android being sluggish is also not about the kernel. Linux kernel can deliver plenty fast.
Windows kernel is solid enough and all, but lacking a significant chunk of functionality that can be found in linux. Some of that is because it's in userspace in Windows, some of it is because Linux has been an R&D platform for academia for decades and thus has capabilities that MS wouldn't touch with a thousand foot pole as it represents work with about 0% chance for it affecting revenue and non-0% chance of it being a maintenance burden.
Re:It's that damn cancer! (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are in favor of open source it would be better to use a different word or phrase. Basically the GPL spreads freedom.
Laughter is contagious (a negative term). So maybe we should say laughter is a cancer? It is unfortunate that there are not more positive terms for things that spread and the ones we tend to fall back on are biological terms that have undesirable meanings: infectious, contagious, cancer, etc. Freedom is contagious -- when people don't have it and see it, they want it for themselves.
Fork it. (Score:2, Insightful)
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 argument to organizations thinking about dropping Windows to stick with it.