boombasticman's Journal: Windows7 based on a BSD-Kernel?

Vista is out for over a years time. It is been sayd, that it was sold over 100 million times, since release on a cold november morning 2006.

Since the market reacted some kind of muted and unsure of what the new os would add to the experience on the computer, Mr. Gates, officially not in the ceo-position anymore, announced that the next one, Windows7 will be out soon.

This brings me right to the question how will Windows7 be made to work in a shorter timeframe than that for vista. The development for vista needed about 10,000 people for 5 years at a cost of 6 billion dollars.

How would it be possible, to write a new os in about 2 years time? Does Microsoft reuse old source code, or will they use parts of other openly available operating systems?

This scenario is not very unlikely, since Microsoft already uses parts of source under the BSD-license (Openssl) which is permitted by law. Microsoft has even a complete laboratory in which they analyse and test open source software for several years time, now.

Do they intend to use this accumulated know-how to their genuine advantage?

Could it be, that the next Windows will use the openbsd kernel as a strong and secure foundation to build on? What can we expect, if this really happens? Will it have KDE or Gnome as standard window manager?

I would be genuinely interested in it, if this happens. We will see.