It's highly unlikely, but let's entertain the idea

Apr 16, 2015 14:18 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft saying that it is considering going open source with Windows might seem like a big deal, but it's actually not and I'll explain why.

I wrote an editorial a while ago in which I explained why it wouldn't matter if Microsoft made Windows free, and I said that, unless it was also open source, it wouldn't really make any difference. Now, someone high on the food chain at Microsoft said that they might consider making Windows open source in the future, and I had to reconsider what I said. It only took a minute.

When you hear something like this, you immediately think that either Microsoft is finally seeing the light or they have other plans in mind. The problem is that many Windows users don't actually understand what open source entails. It's not just something free; it's so much more.

Windows as open source is a nice dream, but just that

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Windows is actually released as open source. You would be inclined to think that it would become much safer, and that would be true in an ideal world. Sure enough, the community would help developers make it safer, but at the same time, people would start taking the Windows source code and respin their operating systems.

Imagine a big company making their OS based on Windows much better than the product from Microsoft. It would bury them. Even if Windows sounds great in theory, it would be hard to apply the open source concepts.

Granted, Microsoft could release the code under a restrictive license and thus maintain control over the project. But the problem that still remains in this scenario is that the entire community of developers making apps for this OS is not open source, and they still sell most of their products. You need to have more than just the OS available as open source; it's also about the people who make apps and drivers for that OS.

The power of the Linux platform doesn't reside in the fact that it's open source, although this does play an important part. It's all about the community of developers who want to make things better, and most of the time, they don't want anything in return, other than recognition for their work. This is not something that you see in the Windows dev community, they are clearly aiming to make money.

Also, Linux is a great platform because there are hundreds of distros out there. Some might think this is a weakness, but it's not. Great ideas found and implemented in one project will eventually land in all the others. Innovation is encouraged and often recognized by most of the other developers.

None of the above sounds like something that could be done in a Windows ecosystem, and this is why it doesn't really matter if Microsoft is seriously considering becoming open source. Linux is not going anywhere, no matter how progressive Microsoft thinks its operating system will become. As long as the company behind any product has to make money out of their product, nothing will really change.