With the retirement of Microsoft support for Windows 98, the question is raised: should unsupported software be made open source? Since Microsoft does not plan to make any money from Windows 98 anymore, and since its code is about a decade removed from the brand-new Windows Vista, it could probably be safely sent out into the brave new world as a gratis+libre code base. I suppose the main motivating factor against this would be fears that it would cut into the sales of Vista. It's also possibe that someone might show up the in-house Microsoft talent by cleaning up the Win98 code, patching the leaks, speeding it up tenfold and then releasing it under a heading like "Windows 98: The Way It Should Have Been".
Mokalus of Borg
PS - It will probably be a very long time before we see OpenWindows come from Microsoft.
PPS - Even for one of the old versions. Where's version 3.11 these days?
1 comment:
I didn't forget. They got mysteriously chopped off by Flock via which I posted today. I guess if I can't trust Flock to keep all of the post, I won't be using it anymore.
I'll add them back in later.
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