Micro$oft Reads The Handwriting On The Wall:

Chxta's World

Micro$oft has finally read the handwriting on the wall. According to Uche, the spectre of extinction was just too unbearable.

Today, Micro$oft and Novell signed a pact on that would allow Window$ and $use work together. I always knew there was something fishy about Novell's taking over Suse. Yuck.

But let's look at the silver lining on this very dark cloud: If Window$ had the kernell of Linux, Windows would become more stable. We all want an OS with Linux's stability, and the GUI of Window$ wouldn't be all that bad. Problem is that KDE has already achieved that, so what's new? Nothing.

What I'D love to see, but I know won't happen is Micro$oft to consider letting the Vista Kernel guys talk openly (with code) with Linux guys. Here's why,

I don't think Linux guys come across as arrogant enough to think that there isn't anything they could learn from access to the Vista kernel, and I think the reverse might also be true. I'D like to see Micro$oft working together on the kernel with the open source community and being able to expend more effort on the desktop environment and less on the kernel level stuff - although paying people to work on an open source kernel would be good.

At some point I believe (and have no proof) that Micro$oft may have to give up any pretension of full back compatibility - supporting Windows 3.1 code in the version after Vista makes little sense (at least to me).

You don't see the OSX community complaining that they can no longer run classic apps. Which is what Micro$oft destroyed when they discontinued support for OSes as recent as Win98.

Micro$oft collaborating, or paying M$ employees to work on the Linux kernel benefits Micro$oft and it may benefits the end user (where the differentiator is the desktop environment - an area where Microsoft is likely to win).

But would it benefit the open source community? That is what we'D have to wait and see. . .

if windows should start using linux kernel does that mean microsoft would have to release its precious source code ?