Why Windows Must Go Open Source

[RabbieBurns]

Why Windows Must Go Open Source -- Microsoft -- InformationWeek

 

interesting read

[Diello]

Good read - The idea of giving away say Home Basic for free, and charging for the more fully-featured versions is a great idea though. It would allow them to compete better with Linux, whilst still keeping some revenue for the Windows division...

[jamesb]

Until the multitude of 3rd party updates arrived that transformed it into an all singing and dancing free Windows and be a bigger threat to the money machine than Linux.

 

Or someone realises that of the 524 Windows distributions, Word only runs on 12, Access on 23, Excel on 7, World of Warcraft on 2, Internet explorer on 8, and so on.

[powdarrmonkey]

Or someone realises that of the 524 Windows distributions, Word only runs on 12, Access on 23, Excel on 7, World of Warcraft on 2, Internet explorer on 8, and so on.

 

Yes, forking would be an issue so it would rule out licensing under the GPL or similar licenses. A more restrictive license that doesn't allow forks probably wouldn't work very well either, because people who buy dodgy copies now aren't going to care that they're buying an unlicensed fork either.

[PEO]

you can dwf tell that mr gates has steped down a couple of steps.