4 ms·

They still make money on every single pc/laptop that ships with windows which is still their biggest money maker with office. If they truely open source windows

They still make money on every single pc/laptop that ships with windows which is still their biggest money maker with office. If they truely open source windows (BSD or else) it will be free to ship for OEM and Microsoft will lose one of their biggest source of income. tl;dr: not gonna happen

keevie 10y ago
Open source doesn't mean free....
- kowdermeister 10y ago
  Be realistic, the next day 10 forks would appear distributing it for free.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Windows is always pirated distributed for free doesn't mean they don't violate copyright laws and other restrictions. One can buy an oem or restricted region license for windows for 20$ but legally it's about the same as pirating it.
- tormeh 10y ago
  Technically not, but look at CentOS. We'd have a knock-off Windows from Samsung or whatever in less than three months. Edit: Every OEM would have their own spin, for differentiation. Lenovo too...
- patrickaljord 10y ago
  Actually it does mean free to redistribute, this is the essence of the BSD or even GPL licenses. And free to redistribute (for free) would be a huge loss for windows. Therefor, not happening.
wongarsu 10y ago
Android is open source, and still (nearly) everybody is locked into Google's version with licensing costs. Google open-sourced nearly everything, while managing to make their "apps" so entrenched that every customer expects them and even a lot of apps don't work without them.
- taneq 10y ago
  > Google open-sourced nearly everything Nearly everything about Android the operating system. Android the app platform is deeply tied to Google Play Services, which is not open source and is once more deeply tied to Google's online services. And they've re-routed apps' access to basic phone data like GPS, camera and microphone through Google Play Services, so that if you want to use any app that uses those services you also have to let Google log those data. It's almost as bad as tivoization from the FOSS perspective, while also invading your privacy. Yay.
- snnn 10y ago
  NO no no... Alibaba has a clone that they claim their OS, YunOS, is not Android and even it is not written in java, but can run most of Android apps.The OS is written in some java like programming language and close sourced.
xorblurb 10y ago
They can give access to the source code without necessarily using an Open Source licence for that.

keevie 10y ago

Open source doesn't mean free....

kowdermeister 10y ago
Be realistic, the next day 10 forks would appear distributing it for free.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Windows is always pirated distributed for free doesn't mean they don't violate copyright laws and other restrictions. One can buy an oem or restricted region license for windows for 20$ but legally it's about the same as pirating it.
tormeh 10y ago
Technically not, but look at CentOS. We'd have a knock-off Windows from Samsung or whatever in less than three months. Edit: Every OEM would have their own spin, for differentiation. Lenovo too...
patrickaljord 10y ago
Actually it does mean free to redistribute, this is the essence of the BSD or even GPL licenses. And free to redistribute (for free) would be a huge loss for windows. Therefor, not happening.

wongarsu 10y ago

Android is open source, and still (nearly) everybody is locked into Google's version with licensing costs. Google open-sourced nearly everything, while managing to make their "apps" so entrenched that every customer expects them and even a lot of apps don't work without them.

taneq 10y ago
> Google open-sourced nearly everything Nearly everything about Android the operating system. Android the app platform is deeply tied to Google Play Services, which is not open source and is once more deeply tied to Google's online services. And they've re-routed apps' access to basic phone data like GPS, camera and microphone through Google Play Services, so that if you want to use any app that uses those services you also have to let Google log those data. It's almost as bad as tivoization from the FOSS perspective, while also invading your privacy. Yay.
snnn 10y ago
NO no no... Alibaba has a clone that they claim their OS, YunOS, is not Android and even it is not written in java, but can run most of Android apps.The OS is written in some java like programming language and close sourced.

xorblurb 10y ago

They can give access to the source code without necessarily using an Open Source licence for that.