Enlarge PhotoMicrosoft imageThe start screen for Microsoft's Windows 8. Microsoft is considering the possibility of making Windows open source.
Jacob DemmittStaff Writer- Puget Sound Business JournalEmail | TwitterA top Microsoft executive said Wednesday that it"s possible the company would someday make Windows an open source platform.
That would be a major departure for a company that has for decades vehemently opposed the notion of companies giving away aventura their code for free.
"It"s definitely possible," Azure CTO Mark Russinovich said on stage at the annual ChefConf conference. Seattle-based Chef makes an open source platform for IT infrastructure.
"It"s a new Microsoft," Russinovich said. "Literally every conversation you can imagine about what should we do with our software: open, not open, services. It"s happened."
There"s no indication Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) will be making this move anytime soon, but just the idea that it"s a possibility is an about-face from the values that were fundamental to the company when former CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were in charge.
Even so, open sourcing Windows would take that idea to a whole new level.
Windows is Microsoft"s biggest, most profitable and untouchable product. If Microsoft has even considered letting the world, hackers included, get a whack at that code, there really aren"t any limits to what it could become.
Google, for instance, made Android open source, and now Cyanogen, a Seattle company, has built a competing operating system based on the Android platform.
"Once we started to look deeply at why are we operating the aventura way we are, what has been holding us back, let's change. That kind of opened the floodgates that you see us now going everywhere with open source," Russinovich said. "It"s no longer taboo. It"s actually encouraged in many places."
Page 12|View AllJacob Demmitt covers technology companies for the Puget Sound Business Journal.
Industries:Technology
