[kenjackson]

It’s already no longer their golden goose. It’s about 6% of total revenue (see http://bullfincher.io/companies/microsoft-corporation/revenu...).

Microsoft could give Windows away for free and be fine. Of course it’s still a lot of money, so they’re not going to leave a multibillion dollar business on the table. But strategically, preserving its revenue is not their priority.

[warumdarum]

How many percent of their revenue funel are dependent directly or indirectly on windows beeing the peoples workstation funneling them towards their subpar products?

[philistine]

In the Enterprise, they'll fight tooth and nail to maintain that synergy. In the small business and consumer markets, people are having a very slow divorce from Windows, and Microsoft is well aware. MS365 is an ok product and can absolutely thrive on its own without Windows.

[warumdarum]

Without the "i grew up with that pipeline "that is windows? I have doubts.

[kenjackson]

Probably some amount. I agree Windows is strategic, but do definitely could see them giving it away and/or fully open sourcing it.

[pjmlp]

It is most likely impossible, given the amount of code that is probably still under contractors copyright, or other kinds of licenses.

[rswail]

They don't have to provide the source to give the OS away for free.

The difference between BSD and GPL in one sentence.