What would be the effect if the entire Windows OS lineage went OSS?

Question

I'm thinking mainly in terms of what if those massive codebases were on GitHub and anyone could contribute fixes and patches? But it's fascinating to consider other effects.

qwertyuiop12 · Accepted Answer

It does not change a lot. I don&rsquo;t prefer Unix systems because they are open (okay, for some problems yes), I prefer Unix because the provided system abstraction.I don&rsquo;t like the windows register and some of its issues derived of retrocompatibility. Also, many of its defaults for directories or &ldquo;system hidden files&rdquo;.

mikewarot · Answer

It would be both awesome and horrible at the same time. Only if they included older versions.
Awesome because I could then run Windows 2000 server forever. It was peak Windows for me. I'd strip out every bit of .NET crap.
Horrible because we'd never move on to a Capability Based Secure OS. It would doom us to the current insanity of computers we just can't trust, ever.
It doesn't have to be this way. Computers can be as secure as the dual floppy IBM PC/XT was, booted from a write protected diskette. It's a shame that was the high water mark for secure general purpose computing.