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Comment by sterlind | Hacker News Reader

(I work for MS but not on Windows.)

I don't think Windows will be open-sourced precisely because it's not as important as it used to be. It'd be a ton of work to root out vendor code incompatible with OSS licensing, remove internal dependencies etc. That's not worth it unless we have big plans for Windows to stay relevant, which I have no knowledge of but suspect that we don't.

Probably we'll see the most relevant pieces be opened up, like the driver model awhile back.

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So while not the whole thing, seems like they could open source core pieces like the kernel. That will probably take some code reorg to achieve though so maybe that's why it'll never happen. Last I heard on HN, windows was pretty much just a giant repo with everything in it. That'd have to change for them to release core pieces (If it hasn't already).

FWIW, Microsoft has been slowly shifting some components to OSS (Command Prompt, Windows Terminal, Calculator, WinUI).

Disclaimer: work at Microsoft but in Azure

As far as community trust goes, MS has been killing it for the last several years. They've done a 180 in terms of being good software citizens. I'm really hopeful that core pieces (such as the kernel) end up hitting the public eye.

Calculator

The horrible new version that is ridiculously huge, phones home, and somehow is slow enough to need a loading screen?

I really wish they would've just opened the good one, but you can already find that one in the leaked 2k source...

They can open source it and still keep the copyright. I mean it is not automatically GPL just becouse they put it on a public git server.

Not without refactoring third party code which is used under license.

Not if Windows includes source code purchased or licensed from third parties who contractually prohibit MS from publishing their source code.

Which it probably does.

I think IE was based on third party stuff. I’m sure there’s bits of that floating around everywhere.

ncsa mosiac

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)

from the Legacy section of the NCSA Mosaic wikipedia page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)#Legacy:

"...Versions of Internet Explorer before version 7 stated "Based on NCSA Mosaic" in the About box. Internet Explorer 7 was audited by Microsoft to ensure that it contained no Mosaic code,[39] and thus no longer credits Spyglass or Mosaic."

> Internet Explorer 7 was audited by Microsoft to ensure that it contained no Mosaic code,[39] and thus no longer credits Spyglass or Mosaic.

oh wow, thanks for the correction, cant beleive i missed that

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