The other day, Microsoft announced that it will be dropping support for Windows 98. The question that now needs to be asked is whether Microsoft will maybe release the OS into the Open Source arena. Should this be the case, you can expect to see various new operating systems based on this widely used technology. Since the 64bit OS has not taken off as expected, and since it has been announced that only a few users will initially migrate to Windows Vista, you would think that there would still be a market for 32bit desktop operating systems. Why can’t Microsoft just sell of the whole Windows 9x system as it did with DOS after the release of Windows 95?

As far as I can remember, DOS was sold to a company called Caldera, which developed and sold more copies of DOS than Microsoft ever could. The Caldera DOS 7 OS, for instance, has built in support for USB devices and various other goodies. Just think of what a excellent package you would have if you could have an Open Source Windows 9x operating system running on Caldera DOS 7. As life was so much less complicated when Windows 98 was still the main operating system around, just imagine how easy it would be again should they be developed even further.

Look, I’m not shooting down Linux, but I’ve tried a few times to install new devices on Linux and I’ve found it to be, at most, very difficult. I’ve worked on most every operating system to come out since CP/M on my very first Sharp MZ80B. The thing with Linux is that it tries to emulate the look and feel of Windows without having the simplistic way of doing this. Why can’t Linux have a standard driver model like Windows. Why can’t Linux have EXE files like Windows. Why can’t Linux be as easy to use and to troubleshoot as Windows? You see, the plot thickens. If Microsoft was to release the Windows 9x series of operating systems as Open Source, it could also be developed into 64bit versions. The security could be upgraded and the whole thing improved. It would be much easier for certain programmers to write programs for a Windows-based OS than for Linux. Since DirectX and OpenGL both feature prominently in the Windows OS, it could also be adapted and improved. Companies that write drivers for Windows wouldn’t need to go take a course in programming in Linux just to write a driver. If a driver were written for one version of Windows, it could be used on another version. I know for sure that I would be more than happy to use a 32bit operating system with small little 32bit drivers than to switch to 64bit when it arrives with Windows Vista.

I’ve seen the size of the 64bit Windows XP drivers. They are, simply put, HUGE! Game developers would also gain as they could develop a game for only one operating system but it would run on all the flavours out there! They could even go as far as developing their own operating systems out of the Open Source code. These operating systems would be tuned to perfection to give the best performance possible. Why don’t we just all write to Mr. Gates and ask him to release the Windows9x platform as Open Source? Anybody have his email address?

[Neels Mostert]

Tags: neels mostert, open source, windows, os, linux