| How to get Vista back on track: open source it |
Apr. 26, 2006
If Microsoft really wants to make Vista a great desktop operating system, it should open-source it.
I'll bet you think I'm being sarcastic. I'm not. I'm quite serious.
Vista is a mess. I know it. Windows experts know it. Even Microsoft's own aren't happy with it.
Microsoft may yet pull out more features from Vista to make its January 2007 deadline. Will we ever see WinFS? The latest Vista CTP (community technology previews) -- read betas -- have started running late again.
Why is all this happening? Microsofties in the trenches like to blame the leadership. Jim Allchin, the lame-duck co-president of Microsoft's Platforms & Services Division, said in late March that overall quality issues -- especially security, drivers, and performance -- were why Vista was being delayed.
Can this operating system be saved?
Well, first, I don't think anything can really get Vista out the door in January. To be more precise, I don't think a version of Vista can arrive this coming winter that anyone in their right mind will want to run.
But, if Microsoft could summon up the guts to abandon its clearly failed massive software development path for an open-source approach, they just might be able to pull a decent desktop operating system out of Vista sometime in 2007.
I'm not suggesting that Microsoft put its code under the GPL. Hell really would freeze over before that happened.
But, Sun has shown that you can open-source an operating system and still keep essential control of it. Sun's has managed to open-source its Solaris operating system under the name of OpenSolaris with its handcrafted CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License), while still calling the operating system shots.
Of course, Microsoft would have to clean the code up of any IP (intellectual property) entangled code that's hiding within Windows. But, Black Duck Software has shown that its programs are capable of digging up legal code problems.
Besides, it's not like Microsoft is any stranger of having to deal with tearing out someone else's IP from its programs. Just this month, Microsoft's Internet Explorer patch changed how ActiveX worked, not for any security reason, but to avoid any further patent problems with Eolas Technologies.
Maybe, if Microsoft open-sourced Vista, we'd also finally see a relatively secure version of Windows. After all, as yet another zero-day attack on Internet Explorer pops up, it's not like anyone can really argue with a straight face that Microsoft's proprietary method of baking in software security is working.
Of course, all this would require a radical change not just in how Microsoft creates programs, but in the company's entire culture.
Still, if Microsoft really wants to deliver quality software, isn't it about time the folks up in Redmond finally embrace open-source? After-all, they could hardly do worse, could they?
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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