A lot has happened since October of 2009. The world has recovered (or not recovered) from the great recession. The affordable Care Act (Obama Care) was enacted. Queen Elizabeth celebrated her Diamond Jubilee. President Trump was elected into office. While all this was going on, Windows 7 was there. A good stable operating system, fixing some of the sins of Windows Vista. Much the way Windows XP helped us forget Windows Millennium.
Windows 7 was officially “retired” by Microsoft on January 14th, 2020. Although some estimates place more than 200 million copies still running worldwide. Normally, if Windows XP is any indicator, those still running Windows 7 would slowly die off or upgrade in the next year or two. However, this time, there is a call from the Free Software Foundation to upcycle (release the source code) to the community. An open source operating system is the norm for Linux. It is not for Apple and Microsoft. In theory, I like the idea. In practice I worry that an open source Windows 7 would be give users a false sense of security. Linux is one of the most secure operating systems in existence, but it took decades of open source to be where it is today. Open sourcing Windows 7 would not make it more secure for quite a while, if ever. Full Article