Posted on 04/26/2014 4:34:06 PM PDT by ShadowAce
It has been over two weeks now since Microsoft support for Windows XP expired. So far, the world as we know it has not come to a grinding halt for Windows XP users, but that isn’t a reason to let your guard down—it’s really just a matter of time. With hundreds of millions of Windows XP systems still in use by businesses, government agencies, and individuals around the world, maybe Microsoft Microsoft should make the operating system open source and let developers take over.
When May 13 rolls around, things might start to look different. Many XP users viewed April 8 as some sort of “Y2K” event—as if their PCs would either stop working properly on April 9, or it was all just a bunch of needless hysteria. Stay calm and XP on.
The reality is that April 8 was just the beginning of the end, not the end itself. Where Y2K was a single event, and even the Heartbleed vulnerability that has gotten so much attention lately was a single vulnerability, Windows XP is an open wound that will never be patched. From April 8 forward, every vulnerability discovered in Windows XP will be a “zero day” vulnerability, and there won’t be any lifeline coming from Microsoft to help protect you from it.
Some are suggesting that a “black market” will emerge for Windows XP patches. That may very well be true. Just as attackers can reverse-engineer the patches Microsoft releases for the supported versions of Windows and find out where the vulnerability is to exploit it in Windows XP, independent developers could reverse-engineer to find the vulnerabilities and create a patch to protect Windows XP.
Ensuring the integrity and stability of the rogue patches, however, and safely distributing and applying them might present a...
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
I think open sourcing XP is a great idea. It works for all other open source software, so I cant see why it cant work for XP.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think the number of dedicated XP users, who will use no other OS, is probably not that many people, relatively speaking compared with the total user base.
XP contains tons of licensed components and patented technologies. Microsoft was paying royalties on those - like the A/V codecs. Who is going to pay those if XP is open-sourced? The licensors will never even allow their code to, effectively, become open source alongside the XP - and without that code you cannot rebuild (and patch) XP.
Now if they’d just do this with 98 SP2 we’d be golden.
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I could be wrong, but I don’t think the number of dedicated XP users, who will use no other OS, is probably not that many people, relatively speaking compared with the total user base.
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That is probably true for home users (especially with new systems forcing people to Windows 8, yuck), but there are a surprising number of businesses still running XP. And even then we’re not necessarily talking about desktop computers; there are a bunch of kiosks and point-of-sale machines (cash registers) out there that run XP.
The guy writing the article makes some good points, but he’s a smug S.O.B. who I wouldn’t cry over if he fell down a couple of flights of stairs.
If Microsoft made the source code for Windows public then HP (which bought Compaq, which bought DEC) would finally be able to prove Microsoft plagiarized the VMS kernel.
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I’ve been horsing around with various Linux Distros since XP support ended.
With I would have do it a long time ago.
No way I’m going back to Windows, at least not on my older computers!!
I’m working now on an Xp box. I have a hundred browser windows open.9 word docs, notepad plus, 18 open notepads, ewinsp, 8 irfans, netbeans, mobipocket, 2 excel and a dos cli. Setting up my next box will be a nightmare.
Screw microsoft. Will probably go linux on desktop next time, already there on webserver.
"It's dead, Jim."
Setting up my next box will be a nightmare.
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It’s not so bad if you go to Windows 7 64-bit, unless you have some programs that absolutely need XP.
Just remember to double the RAM requirements, get at least a dual-core CPU, and get a decent video chipset (DirectX 9.0c compatible with 256K video RAM at the very least), and you should be OK. I already had all that stuff before I moved from XP to Win7 at home, even with a really cheap rig.
What happened to all the zero-day XP exploits that were supposed to appear on April 9?
LOL! Don't beat around the bush - tell us how you REALLY feel.
Now I'm going to have to read the article to plumb the depths of His Smugness.
Slippery slope...
First, XP...
Then, when Windows Vista is no longer supported, there will be those who want to open-source that OS...
Then, when Windows 8/8.1 support has ended in a decade, there will be the same demands/requests to open source that code...
and on, and on...
Which would leave MS wondering what good it does them to continue creating new versions, or updating versions that would eventually become open source.
MS would not be able to compete against its own prior versions of Windows, so, eventually, no new versions of Windows would be developed, and all that would be left, is a Linux-like development/updating process, with millions of developers getting involved in changing/updating/messing-up, the OS. Then, the older versions of the open-source Windows XP would have support dropped, and the same would happen to the open-source Vista and Windows 8 and Windows 8, JUST LIKE happens with older versions of open-source Linux. So, what the heck would be different, if even the open-source versions of “Windows” would eventually lose support?
The “dedicated XP users” will use a new Windows OS. It’s really funny to me how much loyalty XP has now, when it came out everybody hated it, the ugly toy block style of buttons, the re-arranging of the start menu, the quick launch bar. These things were all loathed, now it’s EOLed and suddenly (well OK not that suddenly) XP is the perfect OS. I see the same thing among my Dr Who fans, they always hate the new Dr Who but by the time he leaves they love him, one of the best ever, and man that new guy sucks.
If Microsoft made the source code for Windows public then HP (which bought Compaq, which bought DEC) would finally be able to prove Microsoft plagiarized the VMS kernel.
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If that’s all it needs then HP needs to contact me ... I was thoroughly involved in the very similar case of NCR/Comten (ex-Bell Labs) theft of IBM’s VTAM that NCR could never quite get right on their boxes (memory leaks) ,, they were so stupid that they even left in the comments from the original IBM code...
Give me $10M and I’ll get them the code from an unimpeachable source .. It may not be legally admissible but it’d absolutely kill MS... and I’m all for that since they have operated as thugs since day #1 , selling an OS (DOS) that they did not yet have the rights to , putting competitors such as DRDOS out of business by stealing their code and incorporating it into theirs... and lets set our wayback machines to 1993/4 or so when IBM outsourced the OS2 development to MS and they stole all the good IBM work and delayed the release or Warp until after they had finished 95 and locked up all the OEM’s ... F’Em...
In truth I think DEC knew from the start that M$ was poaching their design but chose not to do anything about it. By that time DEC had the Unix bug and was pretty much ignoring their VMS base anyway.
Just so that I’m clear ,, stealing from MS isn’t really possible when talking of operating systems... I would say it’s a moral imperative that the beast be starved.
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