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Comment by mumblemumble | Hacker News Reader

And I've little doubt that the FSF knows this. The demand smells of performance art to me.

Of course it's a PR trick, anyone with even the slightest experience in software development can figure out that it's a lot of work to open-source a larger project. Also considering what's mentioned in the article, plenty of this code is probably still in use in later Windows versions which are still sold.

If its a PR trick, its one that makes the FSF look stupid to anyone in the know, and a zealot to the rest of humanity. It's not a good call.

I don't know about stupid, but perhaps woefully out of touch. In 2020, they're still trying to fight fights from the 1990s, using tactics that haven't really worked since the 1990s.

Well, in 2020 people are more sensitive to privacy issues, malware and spyware are still much easier to hide in closed source software, and bugs are much easier to correct if one has the sources at hand, therefore I'd say the request would be even more legit today compared to the 90s.

I however agree that's is not going to happen both because of the nightmare of relicensing 3rd party code, and because an OSS Win7 release with community updates and security patches (no telemetry) would probably displace a good number of Windows 10 installs in short time.

Absolutely. But, even if you frame it that way, asking Microsoft to open source Windows 7 feels like trying to take a 2020 concern and approach it as if we were still back in 1999.

If closed source software that talks to the Internet is an inherent privacy risk, let's maybe start by focusing on Google Chrome and Android, which have access to much bigger pots of honey than Windows itself does these days.

Both Google Chrome and Android have open source releases.

Their existence doesn't do much to alleviate privacy concerns circling the closed-source bits of the versions of those apps that basically everyone is using, though.

In short, this seems to be one of those spots where all the FSF has is a hammer.

Pish-Posh.

If Microsoft was as dedicated to open source as their recent PR pivot and thrust has lead us to think then they would have no problem taking on this monumental task.

this 'stupid' PR move from the FSF is only a response to a similiar PR move from MS.

You miss the point where Microsoft would have to acquire those licenses or release a half finished system. What value proposition is there for them to do it?

If Windows 10 is really evergreen then they could do it over the course of years.

About as stupid as microsoft "loving" linux.

What is stupid about Microsoft loving Linux? A large portion of their business offering is built on Linux.

It's disingenuous. It's pure business made to be something more than that. Meanwhile they are still progressing as expected with invading privacy and taking away control on their consumer offerings.

Seriously. You don't have to trust microsoft to realize that their linux interest is genuine. It's just smart business.

Yeah but I want to make fun of a huge corporation for fakely supporting something only a small minority of us computer elite use

You mean the OS that powers most of servers and mobile phones in the world, which is the (very real and pragmatic) reason for Microsoft's support?

A few years ago I was considering open sourcing a small app I had developed a few years ago. Turns out it'd actually require a lot of work to remove dependencies on other libraries I'd used.

That would be very-FSF of them.

How much software (and other IP) must we lose forever before open sourcing is seen as a reasonable demand?

A demand is unreasonable if it is practically unfulfillable, ask for some libraries to improve wine/reactos, say it should've been really free software and move on.

This just looks silly.

should've just asked to open source a few core libraries for wine/reactos, but of course the FSF and famously RMS don't care about practical progress, only about being able to somehow (however inaccessible) use free software only and talk about how unethical everyone else is

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