4 ms·

Wonder if they'll decide to open source Windows via GitHub.

by sys_64738 8y ago

vezycash 8y ago
Dream on
- sys_64738 8y ago
  Maybe. But today's Microsoft is not that of your parents. 10 years ago, could you imagine them being the owners of the hub of the open source community?
  - shmerl 8y ago
    They had one since 2006 (Codeplex) but it didn't attract much interest as could be expected.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  It's not without precedent! With .NET Core [0], and ChakraCore[1] (Edge's JS engine) both being open sourced. And them having thrown the entirety of MS-DOS [2] up under the MIT license, and making a bunch of new tools and stuff under open licenses (VSCode, TypeScript, msbuild, etc...). I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they started making a push to open up many parts of Windows. Already some devs on the Edge team have said publicly that they are working on open sourcing the whole rendering engine from Edge, and seeing that they are moving toward having Windows be more of a "platform" and less of "software you buy", it makes sense that it could eventually become an open source (or at least "open core") product. I don't think it will happen this year, but I do think that if MS keeps going in this direction, it's more likely than not to happen eventually. [0] https://github.com/dotnet/core https://github.com/dotnet/core [1] https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore [2] https://github.com/Microsoft/MS-DOS https://github.com/Microsoft/MS-DOS
  - tracker1 8y ago
    Was hoping to see MS-DOS 6.22 :-( I think MS in the past few years has made huge strides...
    - sys_64738 8y ago
      They recently release the source for MS-DOS 2.x or was it 3.x...
partiallypro 8y ago
What would be the benefit of such a thing? It would be a disaster from a security standpoint in the short term.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Indeed, it's way too much code for the security community to review in a timely fashion. I don't think Microsoft views Windows as something they need to keep closed source for profitability reasons, but there's probably huge risks in open sourcing it. I'd far rather they look to open source individual components one at a time. Most of the modern UWP apps of theirs they could easily open source, for instance. Individual components of Windows may be reasonably open sourcing them as they go through and upgrade and enhance them.
alkonaut 8y ago
Open sourcing isn’t likely but Microsoft has always shared a lot of source even if true open source is a recent thing for them. Doing their shared source initiatives through GitHub (as read only) wouldn’t be surprising at all.

Wonder if they'll decide to open source Windows via GitHub.

vezycash 8y ago

Dream on

sys_64738 8y ago
Maybe. But today's Microsoft is not that of your parents. 10 years ago, could you imagine them being the owners of the hub of the open source community?
- shmerl 8y ago
  They had one since 2006 (Codeplex) but it didn't attract much interest as could be expected.
Klathmon 8y ago
It's not without precedent! With .NET Core [0], and ChakraCore[1] (Edge's JS engine) both being open sourced. And them having thrown the entirety of MS-DOS [2] up under the MIT license, and making a bunch of new tools and stuff under open licenses (VSCode, TypeScript, msbuild, etc...). I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they started making a push to open up many parts of Windows. Already some devs on the Edge team have said publicly that they are working on open sourcing the whole rendering engine from Edge, and seeing that they are moving toward having Windows be more of a "platform" and less of "software you buy", it makes sense that it could eventually become an open source (or at least "open core") product. I don't think it will happen this year, but I do think that if MS keeps going in this direction, it's more likely than not to happen eventually. [0] https://github.com/dotnet/core https://github.com/dotnet/core [1] https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore [2] https://github.com/Microsoft/MS-DOS https://github.com/Microsoft/MS-DOS
- tracker1 8y ago
  Was hoping to see MS-DOS 6.22 :-( I think MS in the past few years has made huge strides...
  - sys_64738 8y ago
    They recently release the source for MS-DOS 2.x or was it 3.x...

partiallypro 8y ago

What would be the benefit of such a thing? It would be a disaster from a security standpoint in the short term.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Indeed, it's way too much code for the security community to review in a timely fashion. I don't think Microsoft views Windows as something they need to keep closed source for profitability reasons, but there's probably huge risks in open sourcing it. I'd far rather they look to open source individual components one at a time. Most of the modern UWP apps of theirs they could easily open source, for instance. Individual components of Windows may be reasonably open sourcing them as they go through and upgrade and enhance them.

alkonaut 8y ago

Open sourcing isn’t likely but Microsoft has always shared a lot of source even if true open source is a recent thing for them. Doing their shared source initiatives through GitHub (as read only) wouldn’t be surprising at all.