Ask HN: What would be the effect if the entire Windows OS lineage went OSS?
I'm thinking mainly in terms of what if those massive codebases were on GitHub and anyone could contribute fixes and patches? But it's fascinating to consider other effects.
I don’t like the windows register and some of its issues derived of retrocompatibility. Also, many of its defaults for directories or “system hidden files”.
Awesome because I could then run Windows 2000 server forever. It was peak Windows for me. I'd strip out every bit of .NET crap.
Horrible because we'd never move on to a Capability Based Secure OS. It would doom us to the current insanity of computers we just can't trust, ever.
It doesn't have to be this way. Computers can be as secure as the dual floppy IBM PC/XT was, booted from a write protected diskette. It's a shame that was the high water mark for secure general purpose computing.