Why won't Windows go open source?
Conversely, why doesn't any Linux based OS go closed source?
Why won't Windows go open source?
Michael Rivera
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Andrew Cook
Windows is mostly open source, it's just not Free Software.
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Sebastian Gray
They only let government buyers look at the whole thing don't they?
Isaac Watson
Essentially yea. NSA/DoD have their own audit teams that review the Windows source code, and they compile it in-house.
You can still get a good idea of how Windows works by looking at the Research Kernel, which is pretty much the Windows Server 2003 kernel. Not all that much has changed, except that Vista added ALPC as a replacement for LPC. And there's a bunch of graphical syscalls not documented.
Lincoln Diaz
there isn't enough public interest as for forcing insert company's name here to change.
Most aren't 100% libre, there's only a few of them that don't contain a single piece of proprietary software. GNU/Linux-based operating systems are a collection of many different programs produced by different entities, most of which actually like the idea of writing FLOSS (that's why they don't settle with Windows in the first place). Moreover, some of them use copyleft licenses like the GNU GPL to try to prevent their software from ever becoming closed. Distros like Debian, Ubuntu, etc., can't simply take everything they want and decide to "close" their software: whoever wrote that program might want to sue you for copyright infringement for doing so.
Lincoln Campbell
most of it's not theirs to open
it's not theirs to close
Adam Phillips
Here's a question, OP
Why don't you kill your stupid as fuck self?
Nathaniel Barnes
IBM wouldn't stop them from opening up all the OS/2 stuff in Windows in fact, Microsoft held IBM back from opening up OS/2.
Christian Cox
That would make it harder to sell. It would be freely redistributable and Wine could be massively improved.
A lot of the vital parts are licensed in a way that doesn't allow that.
No. Open source means about the same as free software from a practical perspective. It's the phiilosophy that's different. Some parts of Windows are open to looking at if you pay Microsoft, some parts are "look, don't touch", and a few parts are properly FOSS.
Noah White
Exactly what parts of Windows are FOSS?
Hudson Ross
There is a very good reason for this actually
Windows is developed by hundreds of employees
When a developer writes code for Windows, it is still technically their code, in accordance with copyright law, meanwhile Microsoft owns the trademarks for the Windows Operating System itself.
For Microsoft to make Windows FOSS would require the consent of every developer who's worked on Windows
Remember when Steve Ballmer called the GPL "cancer"? The reason why he said that is because it takes away personal copyright from people who contribute to GPL projects, meanwhile the original author of the GPL licensed software gets to retain the copyright of his own software. Ballmer was stating that the GPL cannibalizes ownership of each individual contribution made to the software. Fucking communist bastards
Andrew Howard
You are a fucking idiot.
Cameron Long
prove it faggot
Logan Miller
99% of tech firms make you sign a contract saying that any and all code you write is owned by your employer. Windows code most definitely not the property of each individual coder; it is most definitely Microsoft's and Microsoft's alone.
Grayson Rivera
This is also why you never write code for a personal project on company time.
Dominic Thomas
This is completely false. Those words have very well defined and seprate meanings. There are a lot of "open source" projects with non-free licenses.
Leo Hall
The core of .NET, for example.
Kevin Collins
gnu.org
>The two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, essential respect for the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only.
Jason Roberts
Your employer likely has a legal right to anything you "invent" as long as you're employed there. This is a general law in the west that you need to be actively written out of. However it has to be somehow related to whatever you're working on, so if you invent salad tongs while employed at Lockheed you're probably fine.
Cameron Baker
I know one example.
Their package manager OneGet was developed openly on whatever their OSS repos are (codeplex?) then it was moved to github because nobody uses that, this was prior to its integration in Windows 10 as well (renamed from OneGet to PackageManagment).
github.com
It's Apache licensed. I hope it gets some improvement.
Zachary Flores
Even if that were the case nothing would prevent MS from doing so, I'm willing to bet they have more money and developers than SUN ever did and nothing stopped them from opening Solaris for the same reasons.
Andrew Allen
Free software is open source, open source is not necissarily free.
Just because it's open doesn't mean it's license permits freedom.
Jack Thompson
That scale is completely off.
gnu.org
That text and this diagram are the official word of GNU.
Thomas Gutierrez
I've not heard of any systems that can be closed up, besides Red Star OS and Android.
Camden Diaz
Technically Android itself is open source. It just so happens that Google installs Google Play Services on every device sold, which isn't. Also you need that to use the App Store, and they encourage devs to use hooks to it for things, so you'd need Play Services to use the app.
Isaac Moore
The BSDs are good examples. The Playstation operating system is based on FreeBSD.
Completely closing up Red Star OS and Android is illegal. Red Star OS is created in a country where they don't need to bother with copyright and for Android the kernel source code tends to be available somewhere as a download buried in the back of a website.
Angel Fisher
DEVELOPERS
Joshua Reed
Android is not linux.
Andrew Mitchell
It is, because Linux is the name of the kernel Android uses and not the name of any other components of GNU/Linux, but what does that have to do with it? The post you're replying to only says that Android is open source, which it is, not that it's Linux.
Ian Hernandez
If you don't want to call Android "Linux" then don't bother calling GNU "Linux" either, since they both use the Linux kernel. That's the natural path of your logic.