Funnily enough you can easily find the Windows XP source code on GitHub. Not endorsed by Microsoft of course, but they've ignored it sitting on their own service for years, along with ignoring all the modern Windows and Office piracy tools which are also on GitHub. Microsoft works in mysterious ways.

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nebula8804 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If AGI ever comes close to fruition I can't wait to just dump this code into some AI, tell it to fix all security bugs and make it work on M Series processors. Would finally achieve a computing environment that would be perfect for me. Until then, I will continue to dream.

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Night_Thastus 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If we ever get to the point of having a tool that could do something that complex, we're well past the point of using human-written operating systems or using M-series processors.

Which is to say, very, very, very far away.

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pavlov 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why not use AI to make ReactOS better? Is there something in original Windows XP that ReactOS doesn’t want to implement?

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ErroneousBosh 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why not just try and compile it yourself, see what happens?

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chihuahua 5 hours ago | parent [-]

One does not simply replicate a Windows build lab at home. (insert Boromir meme)

	▲	ErroneousBosh 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not with that attitude, old son.

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ErroneousBosh 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> along with ignoring all the modern Windows and Office piracy tools which are also on GitHub

You weren't going to buy it anyway. No-one cares about you. Pirate it if you like. Take your warezed copy of Office Home Edition and be blessed, no-one is going to miss your 120 bucks.

An organisation with maybe 100,000 users each paying a per-seat licence? Yeah, that's the sale they want. Not your one-off copy.

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npteljes 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They are not this cynical over it, it's part of a plan. What they figure is that they can keep MS the de-facto standard this way. Photoshop worked the same way for very long.

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johnisgood 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yup, they will care when a huge % of people start doing it.

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thesh4d0w an hour ago | parent | next [-]

If so they would have kicked this off github - https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

157k stars

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ErroneousBosh 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not really, no.

No-one buys Windows. No-one buys Office. It's a thing that comes bundled with a computer, or that you "acquire" if you need it.

It's only interesting if Barclays are pirating Windows on a massive scale.

Oh shit did I say the name out loud?

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johnisgood 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Do companies really not buy licenses?

	▲	ErroneousBosh 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Reputable ones do.

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chihuahua 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it would be safe for Microsoft to release (intentionally or unintentionally) the source for just about any product. I bet it's incredibly difficult to run a successful build. From talking to someone who used to work on Excel, it took them around 1 day to build Excel from source. And that's if everything goes perfectly and you know exactly what you're doing and are using the build system and setup and configuration that the Excel team has in place.

	▲	ndiddy 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		People have built working operating systems from both the XP/Server 2003 and NT 4 leaks. Here's someone building Server 2003 on Windows 11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWZe00v2Rs0

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iddan 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Most of the money to be made is by licensing software to organisations that can afford the risk of pirating (practically anything bigger than SMBs: enterprises, governments, armies, etc). The moat of everyone used to your platform worths a lot more. So they just regulate enough so it won’t seem like they don’t give a shit at all.