IDK what their revenue looks like, but I'm guessing that selling the OS isn't as front and center as it used to be (from the way they are changing in terms of supporting things like linux).
Even if they keep a pretty tight license around the source, releasing it to the public would earn a lot of good will while potentially finding and fixing security problems.
I don't think Windows will be open-sourced precisely because it's not as important as it used to be. It'd be a ton of work to root out vendor code incompatible with OSS licensing, remove internal dependencies etc. That's not worth it unless we have big plans for Windows to stay relevant, which I have no knowledge of but suspect that we don't.
Probably we'll see the most relevant pieces be opened up, like the driver model awhile back.
Disclaimer: work at Microsoft but in Azure
The horrible new version that is ridiculously huge, phones home, and somehow is slow enough to need a loading screen?
I really wish they would've just opened the good one, but you can already find that one in the leaked 2k source...
Which it probably does.
"...Versions of Internet Explorer before version 7 stated "Based on NCSA Mosaic" in the About box. Internet Explorer 7 was audited by Microsoft to ensure that it contained no Mosaic code,[39] and thus no longer credits Spyglass or Mosaic."
oh wow, thanks for the correction, cant beleive i missed that
Apparently its also an obstacle for many other closed source programs when it comes to considering a transition to open source
Russinovich said never say never though, so I don’t know. https://www.wired.com/2015/04/microsoft-open-source-windows-...
It just means you can read the source.
What I am thinking as well. Unimaginable if it was 10 years ago, but modern Microsoft seems to be taking a different approach. And Apple desperately need some competition to keep Tim Cook honest.