Microsoft dropping Windows-Support

Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella announced that Microsoft is withdrawing its support for the MS-Windows platform and concentrating on its core business, which is „services – services – services“. For a transition period of a few months, support for MS-Windows can still be obtained at an increased rate from Microsoft, but development and support have become too inefficient to be profitable and so the platform will no longer be supported by Microsoft in the future. Negotiations with Richard Stallman from the Free Software Foundation are performed about open sourcing Windows and having it thus continuously available for the existing customer basis. The FSF could take over the source code, continue the development as open source software and charge money for the support. But these talks seem to become extremely difficult, because Richard Stallman insists on not using the word „open source“ during the negotiations. Microsoft recommends using Linux as operating system for both server and desktop and plans to complete the transition of its own infrastructure within the next 8 months.

Nadella points out that this will increase the profitability of Microsoft and provide benefit to the stock holders, because the core business, services, can now be dealt much more focussed and intensely.