[johannes1234321]

> Instead of open-sourcing Windows and treating it as open technology something the Cloud group would love they still jealously guard it as proprietary.

Ignoring the question how much revenue they'd lose from such a move I don't think they could easily.

Windows doesn't consist only of Microsoft's code, but there is the whole legacy with OS/2, DEC/VMS and certainly a bunch of external companies contributing device drivers and things. I assume there are notable parts where Microsoft can't easily figure this out anymore. Code was moved and changed over time and for open sourcing they have to be sure about each line being ok to open source.

Look at Sun's process for opensourcing Solaris and where even OpenSolaris still had some binary blobs in some parts in the end after they went through the multi year process of going through it and rewriting different parts.

[mixmastamyk]

There are legacy parts, but OS/2 subsys was never used, VMS was never supported. The OS has become more modular, would be easy to deprecate ancient stuff.

If anyone has the resources, it is MSFT, however investment in Windows has been on a downward trend, so don't hold your breath.

[johannes1234321]

Who knows what's in the contracts ... and what code moved around and survived where MSFT has no license to share code. Sure most of the things are out, but one helper function here, one there, maybe some data type they are still using relies on code from there ... it is a huge codebase grown in different ways over decades. And a few lines in an old subsystem and some and some successor of some original license holder can use it to refinance all their investments by sueing Microsoft.