By Nelson Schneider - 04/16/16 at 03:04 PM CT
Ever since its beginnings as a GUI frontend for IBM’s PC-DOS, Microsoft’s Windows operating system has been the dominant platform running on personal computers. To this day, Microsoft is the biggest provider of OSes for non-mobile devices. However, where Microsoft once held over 90% of the market, their current numbers (according to Wikipedia) hovering around 85% of the market is a noticeable drop. Among developers, this percentage is even lower, at 52%.
For gamers specifically, DOS and Windows have always been the only two operating systems that mattered. Apple’s Macs have never been particularly gamer friendly (though iOS is very popular as a time-wasting platform among non-gamers), and Linux on the Desktop is nothing more than a long-running joke at the expense of an open source OS that has never managed to garner a double-digit market percentage. Valve may be working toward the goal of a gamer-centric, Linux-based open gaming platform with SteamOS, but I don’t think gamers are going to buy into the idea. PC gamers want backward compatibility and familiarity, and Windows provides that, despite a few quirks here and there.
No, what Microsoft’s dipping marketshare and new business models for Windows 10 indicate is that the time has finally come to give-up ownership of Windows and release the source code. If Microsoft can’t make money off non-corporate Windows users, why even try? Red Hat Linux still exists and stands as irrefutable proof that it is indeed possible to sell something to corporations that is free for everyone else. Microsoft seems to desire a sweet, sweet revenue stream from converting Windows into Software as a Service, but that doesn’t fly with non-business customers who just want to buy some software instead of perpetually renting it at high prices.
If Microsoft opened up the source for Windows, they wouldn’t necessarily have to open up ALL of it. The company is currently moving in the direction of obsessing over their Windows Store walled garden and UWP apps. They could easily keep that part of Windows to themselves while still opening up old standards like Win32, DirectX, and Xinput, allowing anyone and everyone to adopt the friendly, familiar Windows as the foundation for their consoles, handhelds, and other devices. Even better, with the open source community’s eyeballs on the code, some of Windows’ quirks and nuisances could be caught and dealt with in a more timely manner than they currently are.
A while back, I mentioned that gaming is the only branch of the entertainment media that still features platform lock-in for its content. The only way for gaming to break out of this obsolete business model is for a single, non-proprietary operating system to underlie every device capable of playing games, thus forcing individual platform holders to really bring something innovative to the table instead of just relying on the inescapability of their ecosystem. Despite what Lord GabeN thinks, Linux likely won’t be the messiah OS. Android, which is based partially on Linux, is the only real success that OS has had outside of its niche use as the backbone of the Internet. Android is not a particularly user-friendly OS, nor is it particularly feature rich. It has stagnated because it is only used on phones and tablets, and the dominant user demographic of phones and tablets simply doesn’t demand anything better (likely because they don’t know enough about computers to see what Android is missing). Windows was late to the game regarding tablets and phones, thus users and developers are already locked-into the competition (which is ironic, considering how ‘open’ Android is supposed to be).
It doesn’t matter that Windows is superior to Android in every conceivable way. What matters is that Android is free while Windows is not. Microsoft has taken steps to get people on board with their newest and greatest by making Windows 10 a free upgrade for a year after release, but that just begs the question: Why limit the free pricing to 1 year? Why not just give Windows away to normal consumers forever? Businesses can and will still pay for licensing and support. This line of reasoning then brings us back around to my original premise: Why keep Windows closed source if you’re giving it away for free?
As Google has demonstrated with Android, it is perfectly feasible to maintain a version of an open source OS that has proprietary, closed source components. Likewise, Red Hat has demonstrated that selling support and business-specific software packages can still draw profit from enterprise customers. If Microsoft wants to ensure that Windows will remain relevant to the future of computing, they simply need to make the (not so) tough decision to let it be free.
