Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 13th Jan 2009 10:27 UTC
Every now and then, some blogger working for a big website will write a story about how company Abc should make radical move Xyz in order to better, eh, well, that's usually left in the dark. These are generally more akin to said bloggers hoping for radical move Xyz rather than there being a well-argumented reasoning. Radical moves in the technology business don't happen very often, but when they do, there's generally a good reason for them.
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Member since:2007-03-26
Could MS open source Windows even if they wanted to? Who knows what sort of licensed code bits have found their way in there over the years, how many patent issues might come up, etc.?
Maybe I'm just being nieve, but I'd like to think that Microsoft have enough developers not to need to illegally copy other licensed source.
And as for patent issues - there's already a mess of companies suing other companies and MS already claim to own a significant number of the patents in question - so I can't see them being any more or less vulnerable by open sourcing.
Either way though, it's never going to happen (at least not to the FSFs definition of OSS) - and nor should it when it's MSs property and income.
There's plenty other Free/open source OSs out there that are, in my opinion, equally as capable as Windows for most jobs so I'm not going to lose any sleep over closed source windows.
Member since:2005-07-07
Maybe I'm just being nieve, but I'd like to think that Microsoft have enough developers not to need to illegally copy other licensed source.
That's not the point. While Microsoft can legally license and thus use other people's code, they cannot legally "open source" such code.
This is an issue that is faced by any closed source project that seeks to go open source. See Open Office, Java, etc.
Member since:2005-10-19
Member since:2007-07-27
That's exactly the same problem that SUN had when they open sourced Java, Solaris, etc. As SUN has proved, to open source a multitude of different systems are possible, but take a lot of hard work and dedication and negotiations where money is involved. But it is possible. SUN has done this.
This is not an issue if MS really wanted to open source. They could do it if they wish.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Could MS open source Windows even if they wanted to? Who knows what sort of licensed code bits have found their way in there over the years, how many patent issues might come up, etc.?