What are your guys thoughts on this?

Windows XP now will never die.

I think that, if anything, it will die faster. Legal projects can't use this source code for obvious reasons and malware creators (who obviously don't care about law) can make more harmful virus, Trojan horses and the like.

Probably won't change anything, having the source code is nice and all but if you cannot do anything "legally" with it doesn't change that much, maybe it can help a couple things for Wine but that's all.

Honestly given how Ms now mostly only cares about Azure and cloud based solutions, I wouldn't be surprised if they end up releasing Windows 10 source code eventually.

You've lost your chance for a great click-bait title:
Windows XP is now open source! Microsoft...

No source?

I am not gonna link to the websites. I do not even think it is allowed.

I assume there are a considerable number of "//fixme" comments sprinkled throughout.

Tbh its something that MS should of done when they turned off the update servers. And activation for the most part, as I own several copies of XP and when I used to use my owned copies they got tougher and tougher to activate.

Once Windows reaches the end of Extended EOL make it free, and turn off the need to activate. MS have already said they don't make any money from Windows for Home users (hence why 10 is still free for 7/8.1 users.)

The only reason it wouldn't be allowed is if it is a completely disreputable source or an illegal source.

so in other words, its a load of crap. its evidently not from their "shareholder" newsletter. :/

I think in the future we'll need pre-built legacy PCs to play old games, similar to the "Retron" type consoles, and that Windows XP is crucial to that. How this effects that, positive or negative, I don't know.

Well even if no one can legally release anything built from the source code, I imagine being able to study the source code will be a boon to things like ReactOS and possibly WINE.

so its a load of crap then. well done!