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"First, Windows. Now, VB. Dude, you're wasting your time. Stop crying and go open source. You'll be happier. Commercial companies don't have an obligation to hand over their intellectual property."

MicroSoft is under no obligation to hand over their IP, I agree. On the other hand, MicroSoft has a history of shelving (long before all of the value has been harvested from) products rather than selling or giving away their source.

MicroSoft also has a bad habbit of listening to its in-house developers instead of to its customers out in the field. DDE, ADO, VB.Net, Windows ME, the Registry, and a host of other "upgrades" were ill-advised, and in general broke things that were working in older versions.

Of course, these things happen; no firm is perfect and I expect little better from a firm as large and successful as MicroSoft.

However, it would be *nice* if MicroSoft made a few tiny, very minor changes in how they played.

For instance, instead of shelving Windows 95 to let it gather dust, Windows shops would dig it if MicroSoft killed Linux by releasing Windows 95 into the Public Domain as open source. Instead of killing support for VB 6, Windows shops would be overjoyed if MicroSoft would sell the source and rights to the VB 6 engine to a motivated 3rd party who would come out with enhancements and updates.

Of course, these things are mere *wishes* on my part, I don't really expect them to come true. But I hope that the "MicroSoft can do no wrong" crowd doesn't feel so threatened by the mere wishes of a Windows shop that they have to bash the voicing of such wishful thinking.

We've had this conversation before, South.

If Microsoft releases Win9x sources into the public domain, it won't "kill off Linux." Linux developers are very happy working on their operating system -- and no amount of code from Microsoft will deter them from trying to knock off the king of desktop operating systems in Redmond. Instead, what would happen is that they would take whatever informatiion that they glean from the Win9x sources, and they would put it into making Wine more compatible with Windows. So, what would that accomplish? It would make it easier for Linux users to run Windows programs. Which, in effect, would actually strengthen Linux, not kill it off. And, even if you discount that issue, I don't think people are going to want to take a step backward and use Win9x, compared to Linux, even if it's free. Win9x did not implement true preemptive multitasking, its memory management was poor, drivers sucked, and the experience just doesn't compare to the stability and performance of modern operating systems of the past few years.

Now, I have no doubt that hobbyists would take an interest in tinkering around with Win9x source code, but hobbyists are not the sweetspot of the desktop market. They're fringe-dwellers. They like to run all sorts of weird code, sometimes just on a lark. And, while tinkering isn't a bad thing, in itself, it would accomplish very little for Microsoft. I simply don't see any upside there. I think that software piracy, lack of decent apps, poor usability, and a dearth of drivers are probably the biggest reasons why Linux isn't gaining ground on the desktop. Those factors wouldn't be impacted at all if MS, even if MS released Win9x source code into the public domain.