Free Software Foundation Suggests Microsoft 'Upcycle' Windows 7 As Open Source (theregister.co.uk) 59
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is urging Microsoft to open source Windows 7, which is no longer supported by the company. The Register reports: On the face of it, the logic seems pretty simple. On January 14, Windows 7 reached its end of life as Microsoft turned off the free security update taps with a final fix. "Its life doesn't have to end," cried the foundation. "We call on Microsoft to upcycle it instead." Unfortunately, the FSF couldn't resist a final dig, saying the killing of the OS had brought to an end "its updates as well as its 10 years of poisoning education, invading privacy, and threatening user security."
There is a precedent. Ancient MS-DOS and Word code has been opened up, and the Calculator app found in the current Windows 10 now lurks on GitHub. But an entire, relatively recent OS? We can see some problems, not least the licensed components lurking in Windows 7 that would need to be either excised or open-sourced as well. Then there are the bits and pieces that the company would consider valuable secrets (large chunks of Windows 7 linger on in Windows 10 after all.) And then there is the fact that Windows 7 is not actually unsupported. Three more years of updates are available for those who can pay. And with Windows (as well those parts of it licensed to third parties) still accounting for a sizeable chunk of Microsoft's revenues, we can imagine a very functional and highly compatible free version is not really in the company's best fiscal interests. You can read the FSF's "Upcycle Windows 7" petition here.
There is a precedent. Ancient MS-DOS and Word code has been opened up, and the Calculator app found in the current Windows 10 now lurks on GitHub. But an entire, relatively recent OS? We can see some problems, not least the licensed components lurking in Windows 7 that would need to be either excised or open-sourced as well. Then there are the bits and pieces that the company would consider valuable secrets (large chunks of Windows 7 linger on in Windows 10 after all.) And then there is the fact that Windows 7 is not actually unsupported. Three more years of updates are available for those who can pay. And with Windows (as well those parts of it licensed to third parties) still accounting for a sizeable chunk of Microsoft's revenues, we can imagine a very functional and highly compatible free version is not really in the company's best fiscal interests. You can read the FSF's "Upcycle Windows 7" petition here.
Nope, they'll never, ever do it (Score:5, Informative)
Also they know damned well that so many people would dump Windows 10 for the FOSS version of Windows 7 and have no regrets about it.
In fact I'm surprised that Microsoft doesn't sue the developers of WINE, such as it is even.
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Nothing but translate is a vast oversimplification. If that were true, Reactos would have no need for the user space libraries from WINE.
WINE implements Win32 and then the kernel implementation is the translate part as far as I can tell.
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Could not agree more. On all your points. Truly a sad state of affairs.
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Good to see the summary includes all the reasons why it won't happen so we don't need to argue about it.
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Microsoft would sue Wine if they could, but people that writes emulators (and not emulators such as wine) are wise enough to hide behind the "clean room reverse engineering" wall.
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I read recently that Microsoft has defended WINE - and other reimplementations of API's - in the Google/Oracle case, because they're concerned that an Oracle win might prevent them from their own reimplementations - a la Windows Subsystem for Linux. Apparently, keeping web backend developers on Windows is more important to them than 'defending the WIN32 API's'.
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Microsoft probably owes a lot to reverse engineering.
You know, phoenix bios and stuff.
MS-DOS is open source (Score:3)
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Windows 10 is Windows 7 with window-dressing (Score:3)
Pun intended. But since XP/2003 not much has changed in the kernel. They've embedded an antivirus, a Linux subsystem and 4 different versions of .NET and PowerShell but there is very little of desktop-user stuff that runs on 10 that won't run on 7 or even XP.
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Actually, aside from ActiveX how about all the way back to Windows 2000? What runs on XP that won't run on win2k?
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Some Kernel32.dll APIs such as GetModuleHandleEx aren't in Windows 2000. Also no Wifi support.
Re: Windows 10 is Windows 7 with window-dressing (Score:3)
And that window-dressing really sucks.
The number of times I have clicked in the wrong window after Win10 was installed is horrible. How many world-wide man hours have been lost on that?
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Vista introduced massive changes from the kernel up.
The biggest one was that apps now run in a virtualized filesystem and registry environment. Prior to Vista apps just crapped all over the filesystem and could do pretty much what they liked, but Vista sandboxed them and introduced the much hated UAC prompts to encourage good behaviour.
Vista also started moving drivers out of the kernel and into user space. It wasn't complete until Windows 8 but immediately there was a huge improvement in reliability becaus
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I’d argue it’s 8.1 with a facelift (Score:2)
The ACPI changes alone are significant enough that several Win7 and Win8 laptops couldn’t be updated to 8.1 o
Best you can hope for (Score:1)
The best you can hope for is that MS would open-source the components both owned by MS itself and no longer is in use/no longer planned to be used. Something like the Windows Sidebar/Gadgets codebase, which MS abandoned b/c of security concerns.
FSF know MSFT can't legally do that but... (Score:3)
...it furthers discussion of WHY MSFT can't legally do that.
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Licensing details don't explain what's happening. (Score:2)
We don't know what the terms of licensing are for the parts of Windows 7 that Microsoft licensed from other copyright holders. To debate anything on that is pure speculation.
We do know that Microsoft wrote code which is part of Windows 7 and that code they could choose to license to the public under a free software license. But there's a terminological difference in the FSF's blog post on this subject [fsf.org] which helps us understand the outcome we're currently seeing where Windows 7 remains proprietary software.
Would you really want the source? (Score:2)
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If a FOSS version of windows existed, you bet there would be people making time to do that. There are people who spend their time on broken-ass windows clone projects like ReactOS, Working on an actual real windows, much more interesting.
I mean , shit, people spend thier time writing drivers to get hackintoshes running. If theres a hole in the market, geeks will find their way into it eventually.
Absolutely! (Score:2)
I would be happy to contribute hours writing drivers for newer hardware.
Microsoft probably cannot do it, simply because it might might expose back doors that even they don't remember (my favorite was "execute code found in MP3 streams in the kernel" in an old version of DirectX").
Ahahaha (Score:5, Insightful)
This should give Microsoft a good belly laugh. Microsoft will never open-source anything of value unless it's meant to drive people to paid Microsoft services e.g. Linux kernel modifications for the purpose of making Linux run better on Azure/HyperV.
Well, obviously (Score:2)
Of course, it's ended because they have a *brand new* even more effective way to poison education, invade privacy, and threaten security, called Windows 10.
Unfortunately the FSF spoke truth (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the FSF couldn't resist a final dig, saying the killing of the OS had brought to an end "its updates as well as its 10 years of poisoning education, invading privacy, and threatening user security."
Can anyone point me at an article somewhere that names and explains this religion in which speaking an unflattering truth about a corporation is a sin? I've seen this strange phenomenon twice here on /. in as many days, about two different matters and corporations.
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If they were actually trying to convince Microsoft to open source their older operating systems, there are good, reasonable arguments available: "Why not open source the win9x/winME codebase since no businesses use it anymore? Look how the doom and quake source codes have flourished! Look at VS code! Why would you keep archivists on staff to prevent this stuff from getting lost when you could upload
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I have a strong feeling you're not going to agree with me but I'm going to give it a shot: this is politics.
I hope I don't disappoint by agreeing. Of course it's politics, and of course FSF has an agenda -- just as mickeystupid has. I'm morally aligned with FSF, but that's not even relevant here. I'm curious about and concerned by what seems to be a sudden population explosion of baby giraffes (who are as large as grown men, never miss an opportunity to suck up, and rarely stick their necks out for any other reason).
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It's called a "cheap shot". But you knew that already. What's baffling is that you're pretending not to know.
Assuming you are indeed that ignorant, when you're a respectable organization like the FSF, taking cheap shots is below you. You are able to win arguments on the merits and have no need to resort to emotional ad hominems. But - the FSF did just that. It takes away from their argument and makes them closer to that loudmouth down the street. I get the idea that adults aren't in charge. This is v
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I am honored to be addressed by such a great debater, who is...
able to win arguments on the merits and have no need to resort to emotional ad hominems.
Friend, I've visited your slashdork page, and most of what you post seems to me to convey unfocused rage expressed as barely veiled ad hominem attacks. If you have something of relevance to offer to the discussion, I'll forget that I know this and hear you out. Maybe the corporate apologists have a point that I've not considered. Otherwise, please, smoke two joints.
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We just had what's called a teachable moment.
If you've learned by it that the topic of the thread that I started is not the topic that you're addressing, you are correct. If not, all you're doing is impotently screaming into the internet. HAND.
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By and large, Windows 7 was probably the single best operating system for an end-user from not just Microsoft, but from *any* major OS vendor-- and yes, I include Linux and OSX in that statement.
"poisoning education"-- well, that wouldn't be the OS at work, that would be Microsoft.
"invading privacy"-- not until late in it's life, and nowhere near as much as Google, Amazon and Apple and every satan-spawned ad network
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If you are actually trying to accomplish something, then taking digs at those you are asking is not a particularly effective strategy.
If you want to make yourself looks like a snarky jackass and get high-fives from your nerd buddies, then, mission accomplished.
Are they taking the p***? (Score:2)
Seriously.
MS don't want a Win 10 competitor (Score:1)
Microsoft really want windows 7 dead, since it hurts their windows 10 adoption numbers, and, consequently, their advertising and user data harvesting revenue.
Open-sourcing it would ?cannibalise? one of their main ingresses into people's daily lives, especially since they don't have a smartphone platform any more.
Linux is shaping up to be a great replacement to windows 7, especially for gaming; the FSF asking for the source code of windows 7 just makes it look like the FOSS world still doesn't have anything
How about Windows 2000 (Score:3)
Windows 2000 still seems like the best OS Microsoft ever wrote. Why not just open source that? I really can't think of a feature in any later version of windows that was an improvement. Maybe beef up the firewall just slightly or use a 3rd party firewall. Other than that perhaps amd64 support. Addressing more than 4 gigs of RAM in a single process can be handy if / when you need it.
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I guess wifi support is not a need for you?
My favorite version, by far (Score:2)
Stable, didn't have the memory leaks of NT (reboot at least weekly, or it would crash), usable UI.
It would need a few things added that didn't exist back then, like Bluetooth, but those are not all that hard.
Too costly and doesn't align with their goals (Score:3)
I think you're far more likely to see them open source certain modules that it's both beneficial and easy for them to open source. Windows 10 X, and Windows 10 to a lesser extent, is moving toward relying on modular components that get updated automatically through the Windows Store. Those are the kinds of things you might actually see MS open source.
not going to happen (Score:3)
once it goes open source, the public will find out what Microsoft was really doing on your computer. there could be too many secrets hidden in the code.
What about part of it? (Score:2)
only Microsoft could compile it (Score:2)
LoB
What about OS/2 Warp ? (Score:2)
The Open Source Debacle (Score:1)