Shaakunthala's Portal

I've just heard somewhere that Microsoft is going to be (probably not completly) open source due to the lack of demand towards their closed-source products. This looks like going to be true but I can't say exactly. If so what I see as reasons for them to consider open source are,

1. Highly competitive open source alternatives
2. wine

Well, for example, Sun Microsystem's OpenOffice.org is a perfect replacement for Microsoft Office. Since MS-Office package offers some unwanted features that eat up memory, and as a cost-cutting solution, lot of people have switched to Open.org. Even in our grad school labs, the adminnistrators have installed OpenOffice.org on Windows systems. Seems like they will not purchase MS-Office again.
OpenOffice.org is a pretty good office suite which supports a variety of file formats including Microsoft's. Anyway, for report writing I would prefer LaTex, yet another open source package instead of any Office suite.

OK, now let's see what's the role of wine here. Wine is a collection of software libraries which enables users to run Windows executables (.exe) under the Linux kernel. Actually there is no direct interaction between the Linux kernel and the exe file. Wine just acts as a bridge between the Linux kernel and the exe. Don't misunderstand... Linux don't run Windows executables... Linux just runs wine and wine fools the exe file.
One strong reason for people is to stick into Windows is that mostly popular software products are designed to work exclusive in the Windows environment. What Linux people can do to run Windows applications is that make use of wine,.. make a fake Windows environment!!! Now, Linux people can make use of those exes, even Microsoft ones. Due to this reason, Linux lovers still can keep Linux as their independent OS. And the demand for 'gorgeous' Microsoft Windows falls down.
To prevent Linux people using Microsoft's binaries on Linux, Microsft has included some anti-wine features in their latest software products. One is keeping track of hidden registry key that determine whether it is genuinely Windows or wine. Regarding this point, click here for more information.

Anyhow, I'm still not sure that Microsoft's gonna do open source. If so, it will be another victory of the mission of Software Freedom.