Why doesn't Microsoft open-source the existing Edge browser?

Question

Microsoft will soon make Edge a Chromium-based (i.e. WebKit) browser. This is good for Microsoft and the WebKit ecosystem, but not necessarily good for the web as a whole (since this further allows WebKit to define what is standard, vs WebKit following proper standards).

Since the existing Edge implementation is going away, this old code will have little or no value to Microsoft. The community might find value taking a browser like Edge and breathing new life into it. If enough momentum (i.e. market-share) can be gained by an open-source spin-off, perhaps Microsoft would at some point even return to using their creation.

At the very least, the code has the Microsoft name on the copyright and breeds good-will to the open-source community, which is something that Microsoft has invested large amounts of money to do in recent years.

That said, why wouldn't Microsoft make the existing Edge browser (in its entirety) open-source?

Answer 1

There are several reasons why releasing the source code for Edge under a FLOSS license may not be a worthwhile investment for Microsoft:

• The code may be tightly coupled with other Microsoft components (e.g., undocumented Windows APIs) that aren't intended for third-party use, so Microsoft is reluctant to disclose code that makes use of them.

• The code and documentation may be unfit for release to the public such that it would look bad for Microsoft: if they released code that was quite difficult to build or understand, it might be embarrassing, or at least look like a cheap "reputation grab" by appearing to release something significant without doing the work to make it maximally useful.

• Web standards change quickly. Unless a significant community will invest in an open-sourced Edge, it will become obsolete very quickly. This differs from a tool to accomplish a particular job (word processing, photo editing, etc.) because a browser must actively change and grow in order to remain useful to render Web documents. It might be embarrassing for Microsoft to have Edge live on as a kind of "undead" project that grows rapidly less useful over time, rather than to cleanly kill it at once.