> ..the fight for Windows server against Linux is one Windows absolutely can’t win..
Windows server already has been winning on-premise every year for a long time There are way more SMBs out there than big businesses and they all run Windows servers on-premise. Just take a look at the usage numbers of one popular piece of cross-platform software that IT departments might run - https://community.spiceworks.com/networking/articles/2462-se...
As the Apple crowd likes to point out - Microsoft is also a profit leader compared to companies that hock Linux.
> Creative work is going to mobile in a big way...
No it's not.
> ...gaming is already mostly mobile...
Not really, unless you contort your stats to include every single person playing Candy Crush on their phone. Have you ever watched Twitch? Nobody is playing mobile games there. Everybody there is running Windows.
> ...there’s been a huge move to natively support Linux with games (roughly half of new steam releases and 25% of all steam games are already on Linux)...
Oh really? Linux having 25% the support for games means Windows is going down, but somehow Windows having 30% of the web server market means that Windows is also going to lose there? Pffffft. OK!
> Also note that Microsoft will still be able to charge money for the open source code because there's no reason that you can’t other than piracy concerns, and due to the increased legal scrutiny corporations tend not to pirate products, unlike the general public.
Yes, Microsoft will still be able to charge money for the open source code, but if the code is open source, other people will be able to distribute it free of charge or for a fee, that is not at all illegal or piracy! Open source has always meant this. Let me quote from the Open Source Definition, by the Open Source Initiative, the only authority on what constitutes open source:
> 1. Free Redistribution
> The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
All of the open source licenses listed on osi.org allow users to redistribute the software free of charge.
I disagree. The majority of money that generated the electronic boom were from defense spending. I'm not trying to pick a fight, but I personally don't find what he is doing to be effective in a sense larger than the personal interest of a user of a device that wouldn't exist if it weren't for the nuclear state. I mean to say, is Raytheon's freedom to use a compiler as important as individual freedom? There are some logical gaps there to me. I can see where people would disagree with me, and I personally like the man. I've met him...it's a weird story, but I think he's a really cool person. I just don't necessarily agree with him.
It seems you are approaching this topic from the perspective that technological progress is of most value.
For others, ethical progress--that is, technological progress that does not impede on human rights--is of higher value than technological progress alone.
>[I]s Raytheon's freedom to use a compiler as important as individual freedom?
"As important" is a distraction: comparing degrees of importance with respect to rights and freedoms will always be a rabbit hole into which you will get lost as you differentiate infinitesimal cases in context. Freedom is freedom, and if humans are allowed that, that is enough.
Open source does not mean you are free to distribute the code, necessarily. It literally just means that the code is available for inspection. Paid-for open source software isn't a new thing.
You're thinking of _free_ open source software. While I'm not a huge FOSS-head, there is a distinct difference between "_free_ and open source" and just "open source". It's all in the licensing.
I could, in theory, write a license that says, basically, you can't distribute my source code, but you can look at it, compile it, and even alter it to fit your needs. In fact, a lot of licenses on older software projects allowed for exactly that.
I could also release a license that says that you can only redistribute my code if you haven't purchased it, but if you have purchased it, you're not allowed to redistribute it. Pointless? Yeah, probably. But that's still a valid license.
Anything goes, as long as you can come up with the proper legalese to put in the license.
EDIT: I get it, some people support OSI's definitions, some FSF's, and apparently sharing the opinion of one has angered the supporters of the other. A lot of this is subjective, and I know that. I'd appreciate it if you discussed and voted accordingly.
> I could, in theory, write a license that says, basically, you can't distribute my source code, but you can look at it, compile it, and even alter it to fit your needs.
You can, but this doesn't meet the Open Source Definition, so you might be infringing on their trademark if you were to call that an Open Source License.
> While I'm not a huge FOSS-head, there is a distinct difference between "_free_ and open source" and just "open source". It's all in the licensing
"Free Software" and "Open Source" mean pretty much the same as far as the practices, motions and licenses are concerned (but people insist there are huge differences in terms of philosophy). "Free and Open Source Software" is just a new-ish term that includes either team to stop the whining.
"Open Source" was a mostly unused term in the software licensing field before 1998 or the people at OSI who drafted the Open Source Definition likely would have gone for something else.
"Shared source" was introduced by Microsoft a couple years later and is a pretty descriptive term for those less liberal licenses (where sharing code happens outside the criteria of the OSD).
Why not just go with that instead of arguing why people should use a term to mean something different?
There was an effort to do just that, by Microsoft, to muddy the waters, before they settled on "shared source", which might be why you get those harsh responses.
No, when hear the term open source the first thing that come in mind is that the source is readable, thats it nothing else is implied. That being said, oher entities/organization might have their own definition. I'm sure there are many people who use the term open source like mine.
Lots of people get technical language wrong much the time. This is fine. Normally one does not correct heavily because one is polite. When one hears someone starting to spread the mistake one feels a duty to correct to prevent further misinformation. This is tedious but still fine.
What is not fine is when the person using the technical language wrong starts explaining that their ignorance is better than other peoples' knowledge.
No it's not ignorance its willful ignorance. There is the actual definition. And then there is your personal definition.
This is like saying that personally you use the definition of kilogram to be 3.5 measures of flour using one of your cups. You would struggle when using other people's recipes and other people would struggle when using yours....
Software licensing is complex enough already. Why not keep it all simpler and use words as they are defined and understood by the lawyers who are the ones who actually have to deal with this side of things? Then us programmers can just write the software.
Who decide that the OSI definition is the actual definition ?
Unlike your kilogram example, there are actually plenty of people that use/prefer the simpler definition, sure there will some struggle but that is expected.
That's why they should not use such simple and common words to define complex software licensing.
You're not alone. I'm of the mind that it doesn't matter what the license, state of the source, or whatever, I'm here to get things done, not quibble over trivialities and semantics. When I can see the source for something, I call it open source. If the OSI has a problem with that, I invite them to explain to me how my definition affects their goals in any way, shape, or form.
I like the OSI. I use a lot of stuff that they endorse. My 3D printer is OSI certified (or whatever the proper terminology is). But I use my printer to solve problems, and it being open or closed source doesn't really matter, so long as it helps me solve problems.
I like the FSF. I use a lot of stuff that they endorse. One of the operating systems I use is FSF certified (or whatever the proper terminology is). But I use this operating system to solve problems, and it being open or closed source doesn't really matter, as long as it helps me solve problems.
I like Microsoft. I use a lot of stuff that they make. One of the operating systems I use. . .you get the idea.
I recommend just using the definitions of things correctly then :) much easier that trying to persuade other people that the definition does not exist.
When cooking I use the kilogram as defined by the SI system - I don't use some other random mass that I call a kilogram.
Similarly with software legalities. I also just use the standard terminology so other people e.g. my company's legal department gets the correct inference of what I am talking about. If you use it to mean something else you will confuse them.
Correct or not is relative, its a matter of which definition you subscribe to.
Using the term Open source as source is available is not just random. Apparently many people including developer use it that way. I think its fault of OSI to use such common words to define something so specific.
I don't understand. Once someone knows that they are using these words wrong. Why would they not only persist but insist that everyone else is wrong? Is this just due to embarrassment or something else?
If you can look at, but not redistribute, freely, it is called 'shared source'.
Open Source really is about free redistribution. And the difference to Free Software is mostly about the stance on community and lock-in.
"Open source" is very generic, it literally just means "Not closed/private source." Nothing else about redistribution and restrictions is implied. For that there are specific licenses, which the article didn't mention.
It's not open source unless it's an open source license, and it's not an open source license unless it meets https://opensource.org/osd-annotated. You are referring to "source available". Please stop conflating the two.
Can you blame us? This is largely a subjective matter, and the different organizations who talk about this kind of thing have often-conflicting ideologies about how all this works.
When I hear "open source", I don't know which camp the speaker is sitting in. It's perfectly reasonable to get mixed up sometimes.
While it is a subjective matter when looking from the outside, the OSI consortium did a pretty good job of bringing in all of the various groups conventionally referred to as 'open source' and getting the various definitions pinned down in a way that seems to accurately reflect the broad spectrum of possibilities, even to the point that non-open-source companies use their definitions.
While I agree one can still certainly debate the legitimacy of this situation if one so desires, it's pretty much consensus 'within the literature' that the OSI definitions 'are correct' at this pont..
It is a technical term defined by a bunch of people who got together and agreed that their opinions (however educated they may be) are more correct than other people's. That's extremely subjective, and not universally accepted.
Technical terms have definitions that transcend the opinions of people who use them. When I say "byte", everyone knows exactly what I mean, as it's a unit of measurement. When I say "agile", it could mean any number of different things, depending on context. When people say "open source", the thought that comes to a lot of people's minds is simply "I can see the _source_ code, because it's out in the _open_."
It's subjective, and, frankly, annoying. It shouldn't matter how something is licensed, because the most important aspect of software is whether or not it provides value and helps me do my job. Bickering about semantics doesn't get work done.
That's how definitions work.
The fact that you ignore one doesn't make you more thoughtful or insightful it just makes you look like a special snowflake.
Your example is also incorrect because I'll assume you think that a Byte is 8 bits but technically it's not, it's an arrangement of bits a byte can be 0-255bits, it was common to have non 8bit bytes in the past.
The 8 bit byte was set by a specific ISO standard and later by IEEE but it's defined as 8 bits only within those standards.
Agile also has a definition if nothing else because you have bodies and various foundations promoting a specific implementation of it.
Any conflicts that exist are not conflicts in the definition of Open Source, but are different definitions for different terms which is why the terms open-source software and free and open-source software exist.
This isn't a subjective matter, this is a very well defined term, if nothing else because OSS and FOSS software is used in the industry including in commercial products this requires the definitions and the licenses to be very very specific to meet legal and regulatory requirements.
So while you can say there are different software licenses to meet the requirements of being Open Source it needs to meet the definitions set by the OSI which are in general mean that the source code must be available, that the distribution is not restricted in any way which usually means that it's distributed under a free and non-discriminatory license agreement.
You may chose not the follow this definition but this doesn't mean that this is a correct action, this is no more subjective than the definition of a kilogram.
Definitions exist for a reason and that is to remove ambiguity, if ambiguity exists its either because there is no definition or consensus which is clearly not the case with Open Source Software.
I'm just going off of what I hear vocal "FOSS" advocates screaming at me on online forums. They tell anyone and everyone, loudly, that licenses are terrible, but at least some are decent, and that if I can't do what I want, it's not free software, even if it's open source.
Turns out opensource.org disagrees with them. But it doesn't seem like FSF (or rather, RMS, and the FSF by proxy) agrees[1].
In the end, I don't really have a horse in this race. I just write code. I don't care how my company's legal department chooses to protect it.
Frankly, I find it kind of tiresome that there's such a big argument over this stuff.
I manually went through each of the OSI licenses and compared them to the FSF's list a while back, and there were only a couple differences. I don't have time to dig them up right now, but they're largely the same.
We reject the term "open source" not because of the licensing, but because of the philosophy: it was created to explicitly ignore the ethical concerns (users' freedoms) and focus instead on a development methodology.
So the author has some commentary on operating system code licensing with no understanding on open source licenses (that bit about charging money for the source code and "piracy", see other comments here) or proprietary development habits (randomly licensing bits and pieces from third parties when they're no differentiator and too onerous to develop in-house)
Unless those third party licenses allow for redistribution of the source code under open source licensing terms (haha. no.), the result will _at best_ be a CDDL-alike licensed code distribution of everything else. See how well that worked for OpenSolaris' reception in the wider open source ecosystem.
With OpenSolaris, there was some l10n code in libc that they weren't able to get clearance for some reason.
Windows has ~30 years of legacy. There are probably some bits of Adobe code in font rendering - although at least in this case, Adobe still exists so at least it's possible to call somebody to try to negotiate.
If there's some significant piece of code in some ancient video codec (to pick some silly example) that came from a third party in the late 90s who then went under, it'll be a mess to track down if there's even anybody who needs to be called.
Now, such a codec is well isolated: "Free Windows doesn't support the AncientCrapware4Windows codec. Does anybody care?", but what if some fundamental parts of the shell was licensed back then and dragged forward all those years?
It's the long tail that hurts and just checking _if_ there's anything to do is lots of legal work that scales by lines of code (and OpenSolaris was tiny compared to Windows).
For a product that (as the article claims) approaches a retail value of $0, that's a steep investment.
Yea, both are true. The Adobe code is called ATMFD (which last time I checked don't even have PDB symbols on the MS symbol server), and there is also the Indeo codec that was already partially disabled years ago due to even MS not having been able to patch it (indeed, MS created a special telemetry stub DLL that calls the real one to log how often it is used). I don't believe either is required for Windows to run though and they are also well-isolated components.
It seems I wasn't clear enough on that, but either were just examples. Another, OpenSolaris' libc components, is more intricate.
Unless Microsoft's lawyers can make sure that something like this (deeply integrated component with unclear terms with regard to relicensing) does _not_ exist, publishing the Windows source code is a rather expensive task.
What does the author mean by 'creative work' here? Writing? Image edition? Video edition? Software development? None of those things are going mobile in any way shape or form as far as I know
> Losing PC gamers also isn’t a major concern for Microsoft, because again gaming is already mostly mobile
Casual gaming is already mostly mobile. Hardcore gaming is still very much a non-mobile thing, and will stay as such for the foreseeable future. Companies are developing their games (think Call of Duty, Overwatch, Battlefield, Dota) with consoles and desktops in mind. And regarding gaming on Linux, it's better than it was -- it was nil -- but it's still a joke. Go to the steam store page right now and see how many games on the front page run on Linux
I stopped reading at "has caused Microsoft to develop operating systems that people wanted".
- Telemetry.
- Candy Crush.
- Updates crammed down my throat.
- ReFS removed from W10 Pro.
- Still an OS that doesn't know if it's for touch or keyboard/mouse. The information density on Settings app for example is laughable on a 27 inch monitor.
- Every major update used to reset search/privacy settings.
Your Windows installation is insecure full stop. No matter when you patched. Even if all vulnerabilities would be patched then there are still backdoors siting and waiting to be exploited.
Closed-source just ups the uncertainty about security. I'm not saying open source is a panacea, but I think in general it increases certainty about security to some extent.
90% market share is a sum of marketing, good enough product 30 years ago, backwards compatibility and user habits. Many users, especially those living in browser, don't care about OS, they are perfectly fine on Ubuntu but they either don't know that there is something else than Windows or they are afraid of trying something new. I am talking here about majority of computer users not tech savvy crowd visiting HN.
At this point I think it's largely a lack of viable alternatives. Despite increasingly loud noises of complaint from Windows users, it remains the only reasonable thing for a vendor to preinstall on a computer. OSX only comes on (expensive) Macs, and they tried Linux on netbooks back in 2007 and it was a disaster (partly due to vendor fragmentation, partly due to marketing that papered over the whole "different OS" issue).
We so nearly had it with Ubuntu. I suspect sooner or later Google will pull it off in some form or another, if ChromeOS doesn't already count.
Do you realise that 99% of consumers are not IT related?
This means that 95% of people who own windows do not care about all the issues you pointed out. I subtracted 4% because some people do not like the telemetry and maybe 0.001% dislike the fact that candy-crush is pre-installed.
It could perhaps go open source in the same way .NET has. A core part of it might be made open source, such as the IOT core windows bits. They need a good reason for it. Hobbyists adapting it for various SoCs could be one such reason.
The vast codebase that is the "full" x64 Windows desktop OS though? I'll eat my hat if that happens. Source made visible, sure. That's already true for a lot of it. But proper open source, don't hold your breath.
> Microsoft has publicly stated that Windows 10 will be the last product in the Windows line.
This may be because:
1. Cloud is where the money is.
2. Maintaining an OS is a lot of burden (Hardware drivers,
patents, tie ups with several hardware/software vendors,
developer cost, and so on)
So the simple thing they can consider is to ditch the OS, and develop platform independent solutions. Gradually this will (hopefully) happen.
Releasing the OS source will be too much costly (cleaning back doors, lots of code smell, and so on). This will cause too many people vulnerable to attacks. And that can't happen.
I doubt they'll make Windows open source ( maybe pieces of it ). They will make the OS free and collect data on you and sell you ads. Think Nadella said as much in his interviews.
Also, the author should have defined what he meant by "open source" because it means different things to different people.
> have to lose for making Windows open source and requiring people to pay to use win32 apps?
Surely, if Windows is open source, we can port Wine to it and run all the win32 executables we want? Wine already runs old Windows programs better than Windows does.
No, it really doesn't. Windows has had backwards compatibility as a huge priority for a long time, often to their detriment. You can literally update a machine from Windows 3.1 to windows 10, and programs written for Windows 3.1 will still work.[1]
EDIT: TO be clear, this is a video of upgrading to Windows 7, and there is a direct upgrade path to 10 from 7. Also, as per another user's reply, this doesn't hold true for 64-bit. However, that doesn't change the fact that Wine doesn't and really can't run win32 better than win32 does.
They made a decision to cut the compatibility but also made the 32bit XP mode VM ship with windows for a transition period (unsure if it's still available). I think it feels like a fair compromise (assuming the VM only causes an overhead for those who need it, but having a whole kernel subsystem for legacy apps might mean security or performance issues for all users)
That's interesting. I didn't actually know that, I figured there'd be some kind of shim in place to make it work. Incidentally, this doesn't mean that Wine runs 16-bit Windows programs particularly well. I did a bit of quick research, and it turns out you need to jump through some hoops to run 16-bit on Wine.[1]
I maintain that Windows is always a better choice for running win32 applications, unless you don't have that option. I'll also note that I'm not saying Wine is useless, or anything along those lines. I merely take issue with the idea that it runs win32 applications "better" than a system that's designed to be backwards compatible with win32 applications by the same entity that made win32.
Both WoW64 and Wine provide an environment that pretends to be 32-bit Windows and presents the Win32 API, but neither one is actually Windows XP. I've had pretty similar experiences trying to run old win32 games on both systems (i.e. it's hit or miss) but Wine has the significant advantage that it will allow a program to think it has admin privileges when it doesn't. Also under Wine, I've had better luck running games from ISOs I've ripped, where I have to insert an actual CD in a physical drive for the program to run under Windows.
The fun thing is that I can also imagine how it will technically likely work too, such as test signing .msu and .cab to install code modifications for testing. Outlook recently added .msu to blocked attachments.
Lol. That is not going to happen. When I was working on a project that required access to the Windows source code, the security hoops I had to jump through were ridiculous. Can't see them abandoning all that nice security machinery.
Actually, I worked in such a project a long time ago and I had the opposite feeling. They just gave us a few cds with the code on it. There were some restrictions as who could use it and so on, but it seems they didn't really care.
Lucky you. We got RSA tokens and devices and software so that we could connect to the Redmond server where the stuff was hosted. Copying it from that environment to your own was NOT ALLOWED.
Windows server already has been winning on-premise every year for a long time There are way more SMBs out there than big businesses and they all run Windows servers on-premise. Just take a look at the usage numbers of one popular piece of cross-platform software that IT departments might run - https://community.spiceworks.com/networking/articles/2462-se...
Oh, you were just talking about web-servers, right? Well Windows server also has greater than 30% of the public web server market share, more than any one Linux variant - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...
As the Apple crowd likes to point out - Microsoft is also a profit leader compared to companies that hock Linux.
> Creative work is going to mobile in a big way...
No it's not.
> ...gaming is already mostly mobile...
Not really, unless you contort your stats to include every single person playing Candy Crush on their phone. Have you ever watched Twitch? Nobody is playing mobile games there. Everybody there is running Windows.
> ...there’s been a huge move to natively support Linux with games (roughly half of new steam releases and 25% of all steam games are already on Linux)...
Oh really? Linux having 25% the support for games means Windows is going down, but somehow Windows having 30% of the web server market means that Windows is also going to lose there? Pffffft. OK!
This article is garbage.