Why Windows Must Go Open Source

Babcock's arguments for the 'opening' of Windows are the most well thought out I have heard yet.

The key thing for Microsoft, (I can't believe I'm saying it) is developers. With Android having Google's 'mindshare' behind it and QT with Nokia's, MS is just not going to be able to keep them all to themselves like they have been. And that is what will make the 'opening' of Windows happen.

Either that, or they will quit making an OS period rather than give it away, which sounds more like them anyway..

My 2 cents..

Given their horrendous security record (a reactive, rather than proactive stance), I wouldn't mind at all if they just got out of OS development completely.

gus3, if you amend that to "all software development completely" I will agree 100%, and so will my cats and dogs. Exhibit A: ActiveX.

Meh. I just don't see the point. Personally, I can't think of anything more boring than the idea of windoze source code.

@herz...how could Windows source code be boring? Surely the comic entertainment value would be worth the price of purchasing a copy of Vista.

@rijelkentaurus - I suppose you do have a point. Perhaps I've just become too jaded for the slapstick genre.

The curiosity factor alone would get thousands of new developers to look at it, and I will bet it would not take long for them to come up with some pretty good fixes too.

That is the real problem, the MS developers do not want to find out just how bad their code is, and how easily fixable it probably is..

@scott - Gee, do I want to jump headfirst into a steaming pile of ms windows code and do my best to fix it up and make it a linux killer? Nah, sorry, no interest.

But the opening of the code would be beneficial to those writing apps which have to either emulate ms clients or communicate with ms servers.

Other than that, what would be the point, really? We have a whole open source unix culture already - it would seem weird and dorky to go back to drive letters, backwards slashes and the whole pc mindset after all this time.

Why not, instead, put that effort into making linux even better?

edit: added emphasis

Quoting: ... comic entertainment value ...

For many reasons I doubt MS could or would release the source, however, I really fail to see many getting too many giggles from mostly C++ code. Java is easier to read, do you think the flaws are that readily visible to someone not knowing its structure. I keep hearing that old portions of the code were retained, precisely because its function was not understood but breakage was observed when removed.

Fixed by new to MS Windows dilettante programmers? More than unlikely and it would be inhumane. Think of the suicide rate.

YBT

> Fixed by new to MS Windows dilettante programmers?

Why do you assume dilettante?

Quoting:Why do you assume dilettante?

For

Quoting:Quoted: ... comic entertainment value ...

YBT*

* Apparently you have forgotten the definition.

@txt -

Ah, I see where you're going now...

At least reading the comments in the code (if any, of course) should be fun.

Quoting:At least reading the comments in the code (if any, of course) should be fun.

Unlikely, the statistics are against you, etc.

Freeing or even open sourcing the code does not mean you will ever see the complete [mess || entity || picture || ...]. For example, third party contract code where permission is not granted has to be removed. In addition, when Mozilla was first being released there were statements that it had to be sanitized, i.e. removing scurrilous comments that might have given veritable hours of enjoyable reading. Perhaps even years of potential lawsuits.

YBT

Running Cscope on that codebase would probably result in ENOMEM.