On Thu, 13 Dec 2012, Allan Duncan <amd2345@fastmail.com.au> wrote:

Unlikely - GPL issues. BSD however...

There is nothing preventing anyone from running proprietary code on a GPL kernel. If MS wanted to use the Linux kernel then they would probably add some features that they need to deal with case in filenames, different IPC mechanisms, which they would release under the GPL (this is OK even if Linus doesn't like the code). Then they would have proprietary libraries using those system calls to provide the interface to Windows applications - which is also OK. On Thu, 13 Dec 2012, Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net> wrote:

I would expect it to be possible at the cost of backward compatibility. It is extremely unlikely ever to happen:

I agree that it's unlikely, but I don't think it would necessarily break backward compatibility for applications.

Microsoft have a modern kernel, the design of which is said to derive from Vax VMS.

LOL

Apparently some of the VMS people went to Microsoft and developed what became the Windows NT kernel. In any case, given that Microsoft already have one of their own, there is absolutely no reason for them to change.

Developing your own kernel nowadays is a fairly stupid thing to do when there's a range of decent ones available for free. MS gets no real competitive advantage by having their own kernel and haven't done so since the days of OS/2. If they are going to be developing system software in the long term it would make sense for them to use a free kernel and save some development money - and maybe assign the good programmers to debugging MS- Office. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/