Depends on where you look. Much of the NT kernel is "simple", but it's not easy stuff to get right. There's a bunch of legacy code in the Win32 layers, especially dealing with user input, that is just frightening (comments like "This stupid hack makes the utterly broken Compaq XYZ-3000 keyboard not crash the system"). The COM stuff is just complex and arcane and top-heavy with architecture astronautics. The build system is, or was, a soul-destroying, radioactive and rotting cesspool of Perl; doing Windows builds sucked real hard.

So it's a mix of really quite good code, and really quite awful code (that they're dealing with, I think), and code that makes you want to quit, every day.

(Soapbox: You should never have code in your project that you are scared of touching. Never. If you do, get rid of it and replace it. Don't layer over it, don't give it to some intern to maintain, just face the problem and deal with it, or it will be the most costly code in your product).

Given that MS is a very successful company that got to where it is today based on closed source and copyright, I am not expecting that to happen, ever.

I appreciate your candor.

Windows source code has been available for a long time under the Shared Source initiative. Some governments (including Russia), large companies, universities, partners and maybe even MVPs have had access to some versions. Email [email protected]

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/

The kernel I start with is indeed derived from the same one that project started with.

Though I'm sure you are not the only Microsoft employee who has used OpenBSD.

At one point, after the Danger acquisition, Microsoft HR was advertising a position for a NetBSD developer.

Are there any rules about using a non-Windows OS in the office? Even if it increases your capabilities and productivity?

For instance, Macbooks are really common on some apps teams. In contrast, I work on the OS itself, so tools such as WinDBG and Hyper-V are essential to getting work done.