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: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
RE[3]: A better question
by PlatformAgnostic on Wed 14th Jan 2009 14:06
in reply to "RE[2]: A better question"
Member since:2006-01-02
I have yet to come across any IBM or OS/2 code in the base parts of the system, and I doubt it exists in modern versions of Windows (there used by a an OS/2 environmental subsystem, but that was eliminated back in XP).
On the other hand, there are little bits and pieces of Intel code here and there that were written under agreement.
Edited 2009-01-14 14:07 UTC
Member since:
2007-03-26
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.