MS Opens Source

Nate Orenstam
Monday, December 01, 2008

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By Accident

(Redmond, Wash.)  Microsoft today announced that they are open sourcing Windows. A version of Windows was posted on the Internet recently and Microsoft officials greeted the news with enthusiasm.  "People always thought we were against open source, and that's not true at all," said CTO Bill Gates.  "The open source guys don't make any money, so what do we care, as long as we get it all."  CEO Steve Ballmer, who has until recently been a staunch critic of open source software said "What Bill means is that we're always in favor of innovation.  And, ah, world peace.  We're hard core about that stuff."

Microsoft was surprised to learn that Windows code had been leaked to the Internet.  "We were surprised because we thought we'd lost the Windows code some time ago.  We'd had one of those destroy-all-the-files situations when the DOJ was coming on strong and apparently some of the guys took it a bit too literally."  Ballmer admitted that the loss of the source code was one of the reasons the company was doing a complete rewrite for Longhorn.  "I guess we can delay that a couple more years now." 

Experts have said that while much of the Windows 2000 and NT 4.0 code had been leaked, it was not the complete source code. "We still can't get it to compile yet," Ballmer admitted.  "But when we do, we can start charging customers again for patches. Otherwise, I gotta go learn Linux."

About the author
Nate Orenstam is a leading J2EE programmer and believes software should be free, except for the stuff he writes.