13th February 2004, 6:47 PM
OSX is actually based on Darwin, a form of Unix. And I'm no idiot. I know Linux is open source.
Microsoft's source code being open is vastly different than Linux's. With Linux, there is a whole community based on and devoted to its openness. It's a well esablished community and has a controlled environment for its openness. Windows source code is, however, not. For starters, the Windows source code is the holy grail for any hacker or experienced programmer, because of its secrecy, forbideness, and overall popularity. But due to it being illegal to aquire it, mainly only black hat hackers (who have no respect for software licenses) will seek to aquire it. They may just be curious to see what the code looks like, how well it was written, and the comments in it (which I hear contains some profanity from some disgruntled Microsoft employees), or they may scour for an unfound security flaw, and easily take advantage of it.
Microsoft did not want to release their source code. They were not prepared for this. This is not a controlled open source environment under the GNU license. Many hackers hate Microsoft and the people who use Microsoft's products. The source code is one of the greatest tools someone like that can have.
Microsoft's source code being open is vastly different than Linux's. With Linux, there is a whole community based on and devoted to its openness. It's a well esablished community and has a controlled environment for its openness. Windows source code is, however, not. For starters, the Windows source code is the holy grail for any hacker or experienced programmer, because of its secrecy, forbideness, and overall popularity. But due to it being illegal to aquire it, mainly only black hat hackers (who have no respect for software licenses) will seek to aquire it. They may just be curious to see what the code looks like, how well it was written, and the comments in it (which I hear contains some profanity from some disgruntled Microsoft employees), or they may scour for an unfound security flaw, and easily take advantage of it.
Microsoft did not want to release their source code. They were not prepared for this. This is not a controlled open source environment under the GNU license. Many hackers hate Microsoft and the people who use Microsoft's products. The source code is one of the greatest tools someone like that can have.