Microsoft: The open source company

[Karlston]

The times, they are a-changin'—even bits of Windows will be open source.

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The news from Microsoft's Build developer conference that surprised me most was that Microsoft will ship a genuine Linux kernel—GPLed, with all patches published—with Windows. That announcement was made with the announcement of Windows Terminal, a new front-end for command-line programs on Windows that will, among other things, support tabs.

 

Microsoft's increased involvement with open source software isn't new, as projects such as Visual Studio Code and the .NET runtime have operated as open source, community-driven projects. But this week's announcements felt a bit different.

 

The Linux kernel will be powering Microsoft's second generation Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). The first generation WSL contains a partial re-implementation of the Linux kernel API that uses the Windows NT kernel to perform its functionality. In choosing this approach, Microsoft avoided using any actual Linux code, and hence the company avoided the GPL license with its "viral" stipulations that would have arguably forced Microsoft to open source WSL and perhaps even parts of Windows itself.

 

In the second-generation WSL? It's a full GPLed Linux kernel running in a lightweight virtual machine. This won't be part of the base Windows installation—I'm told that developers will need to enable Developer Mode in Windows first—but it is, nonetheless, a GPL-licensed component forming part of a Windows component. Windows' WSL feature has GPLed underpinnings, and that's not something I would have expected to write even a year or two ago.

Opening up Windows itself

No less significant is the Windows Terminal project. Many Windows users will know that Windows' command-line programs depend on a process named conhost.exe that's responsible for drawing the command-line windows. As part of Windows Terminal, Microsoft has published the source to conhost.exe. This is an important (albeit uninteresting) part of Windows itself, and Microsoft has published it using the permissive MIT license. This is, I think, unprecedented. While Microsoft has open sourced Windows utilities such as Calculator, this represents the first time that the company has published core Windows code—and with an open source license to boot.

 

The Windows Terminal project is similarly permissively licensed. While it's branded an early alpha release at present, once it stabilizes and has a solid feature set, it's likely to be integrated into Windows itself and to ship as a standard Windows component. Just as with the publishing of conhost.exe, this too represents something of a first: a (new) core Windows component that's developed as open source.

 

Microsoft has changed. It's not the company it once was. Open source is no longer the enemy—it's now something that has a role across the entire company. And open source is not just for discrete, standalone applications; it's now a viable building block for core Windows features.

 

Back in 2015, Mark Russinovich said that Microsoft could open source Windows. At the time, I wrote that this wouldn't happen any time soon but that we might well expect individual components, such as increasing parts of the .NET Framework, having their source opened. Lo and behold, this appears to be the very path that Microsoft is taking. Open source is now just a part of the company's toolkit, and there's little apparent limit to where it can be used.

 

Source: Microsoft: The open source company (Ars Technica - Peter Bright)

[steven36]

Lol  this is nothing new  that's like calling Google Open Source  , most all there software  is built on open source and have open source versions  it's the close source components they mix into there  software were you can't reverse it legally  that make it bad.  Just because it's open source don't mean it's good  it just means if someone want fork it and remove anything bad they put in it they can.  It has a  lot to do with who built it and witch services do it use  and do they collect data . They make all kinds of open source stuff for hacking that do really bad things even.  Today it's not so much about the software if it's open source or closed source its about witch services it use it like and email client it can be open source and you can run Google or Microsoft trough it and it will be evil  . But you can use a privacy based email client and it not be that evil. Same with browsers  , Streaming Software or anything that that uses cloud services  it just depends on the service providers privacy policy . Open Source can run closed source services just fine.

 

.People on Linux use VPN  and Tor just like people on Windows do because it's impossible to do what you have to do or have fun even without some internet services trying to collect your Geo location and data , But big tech  I mostly don't sign in to there stuff because they will want a phone number or something to allow you to even use a vpn . I have a Google Account were i made with a VPN  some how i got around them collecting a phone number on Linux.   i have  to use the Canada vpn ips i signed up with  because it's locked to those ips, Android its not a problem to make Google Accounts because they already have your phone number. 

 

Proof

 

I use  it for free  rated R  YouTube movies  because the user script  wont let you watch it in full screen anymore and 3rd party youtube apps don't work for drm videos also i use for another  site were you need Google Drive to download some of there releases .

[jango]

Because this is the future of software development: