Is the Windows Kernel Code still a Secret?
It’s not open source if that’s what you mean.
There are wide ranges of secret. If you mean it is closely guarded and never leaves the bunkers in Seattle, then no. Microsoft make the source code available to many people under non-disclosure. Many universities have access.
This is a pretty common thing. Window’s predecesor, DEC’s VMS was available to many universities in a similar fashion, although I remember that back then it was on microfilm. I used to have access to the Solaris source code (long long before that was open sourced) under a similar agreement many years ago.
The code is of course subject to copyright, and also contains trade secrets. It is probably the protection of trade secrets that is the main issue. Despite the dramas in the past involving leaking the source code, there isn’t a lot of damage done to MS if it does leak. No competitor can use the information so leaked - not without drawing down the ire of legions of MS’s lawyers, and knowledge so gained can’t be used in an open source project without jeopardising that either. The law is quite specific about how reverse engineering may be used legally, and leaked trade secrets isn’t part of it.
The actual internal working of the kernel is reasonably well documented in available publications. (Not brilliantly, but reasonably.) Probably the biggest risk of letting too much knowledge leak out is when third party software vendors makes use of undocumented features, and when MS change those features there is a great hue and cry from the userbase, and MS find themselves forced to retain the undocumented feature or interface. Which can be a serious pain. History has shown this to be real problem, and worth avoiding.
I’m not positive of this but it seems to me Microsoft claimed in one of their court cases a few years ago that they were unable to locate the original Windows source code.
The source code to Windows 2000 and Windows NT was leaked onto the Internet in 2004. I don’t know if that includes the kernel, however.
For us technopeasants who are following along at home: what’s a kernel code?
(I assume it out-ranks major code but isn’t as powerful as general code? :D)
Trade secrets may be able to prevent a leak, but they’re helpless to stop up a leak once it’s occurred. Trade secrets are just an aspect of contract law: If someone needs to see my secret, then I make them sign a contract that makes them keep the secret or I can bring down all sorts of penalties on them. But if they share a secret with a third party anyway, that third party didn’t sign any contract with me, and the fact that it’s a “trade secret” doesn’t give me any power to stop them from doing whatever they want with it. Nor can trade secret protection be effectively combined with patent protection, since a patent inherently requires full disclosure of the secret.
You must have missed the “technopeasant” bit. 
The wiki article is of no help if I can’t understand it. 
Even though it’s got charts in primary colours.
Nitpick: VMS is not [NT-kernel] Windows’ predecessor except inasmuch as one of the main architects of Windows NT was a central part of VMS’ design.
The kernel is the central core of an operating system. It is responsible for such low-level functions as scheduling threads for multi-processing, accessing the hardware abstraction layer, device drivers, etc. On top of the Windows kernel (for example) run the components that programmers more typically interact with, such as Win32, NTFS, DirectX, etc.
Dave Cutler being the man in question. If you compare the basic architecture, and many of the underlying paradigms and designs, you will find an extraordinary overlap. If you were used to programming VMS system calls, you can pick up programming Windows very quickly indeed. I used to program VMS stuff, and I can almost always predict how Windows will do something based upon that experience.
The goals in designing NT that Dave was given were very very close to the goals that he had had at DEC in moving from the various 16 bit OS’s running on the PDP-11 family and moving forward onto the 32 bit VAX. The solutions chosen for NT were essentially the same. Some of the differences Dave initially tried (i.e. a microkernel approach) were mostly discarded.
Indeed if you look at current trends in Windows features (especially those intended for Longhorn and never making it into Windows Vista or 7) you find essentially those features of VMS that so far have not made in into Windows. VMS’s RMS being probably the major one.
Similarities were such that legal action brought by DEC resulted in an out of court settlement with MS. NT and its scions are not VMS, but they are most certainly so heavily derived and influenced by VMS, that VMS can be considered its parent.
ReactOS is a project to create a Windows XP/2003 compatible operating system.
At one point they were accused of using some Windows code and had to do an audit to see if there was indeed any Windows code, and if so, take it out.
They’re taking forever to come out with a usable beta version, and I wonder what good an XP clone will do since Windows has moved on to Vista, and now 7.
>and I wonder what good an XP clone will do since Windows has moved on to Vista, and now 7.
ReactOS is a Windows 2000 clone, fwiw.
As far as the kernel goes, lots of big companies, governments, and universities have it. They have the muscle to demand the the entire source code of the products they buy and they have the ability to compile it themselves. The XP installs the DoD and others use, I believe, have been compiled by the NSA or some other security organization. Things have been changes, removed, added, etc. So its a bit like Linux for these large organizations.
>and I wonder what good an XP clone will do since Windows has moved on to Vista, and now 7.
ReactOS is a Windows 2000 clone. I dont see why you wouldnt just run Wine and be done with it.
As far as the kernel goes, lots of big companies, governments, and universities have it. They have the muscle to demand the the entire source code of the products they buy and they have the ability to compile it themselves. The XP installs the DoD and others use, I believe, have been compiled by the NSA or some other security organization. Things have been changed, removed, added, etc. So its a bit like Linux for these large organizations.
Hijack: HorseloverFat, given your two posts, identical except for the edited second paragraph, are you not aware that you can edit a post for five minutes? I would prefer you do that rather than posting the same slightly edited post a second time, as this is confusing.
Its a bug with the forum software. I didnt repost. Talk to the administrators.
So the bug inserted an extra comment into your post?
Extraordinary.
ISTR when that leaked happened, the Slashdot crowd leapt on the opportunity to laugh at Microsoft’s code, but it turned out to be annoyingly well written. They actually employ some decent coders at Redmond, who’d have thought?
If there’s a bug, seems to me that in his case Edit created a distinct post rather than properly updating an existing one. xxx
>So the bug inserted an extra comment into your post?
Edit made a new comment. I sometimes get timeout errors that are wrong and edit screws up. Wow, are you calling me a liar? Why the hell would I do that?