gmp-extensions VS Windows Terminal

Some parts already have been open-sourced. For example, the console host component has been open sourced here: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

And the FAT filesystem driver: https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/tree/mai...

Maybe they could consider an Apple-style approach: open source the core of the kernel and text-mode user space but leave the GUI closed.

Of course, open sourcing everything would be even better, but that might too big of a step for them. Open sourcing the non-GUI core could be a good initial step, whether or not it ends up going further.

cmd.exe or the new https://github.com/microsoft/terminal ?

A quick off-the-cuff remark based solely on the title: in 2024, I think the state of the terminal has never been better, in large part to Microsoft making a high quality terminal easily available to everyone on Windows [1]

As an application author, I love being able to assume that all major platforms have a good terminal and that my favorite terminal rendering libraries should Just Work on all of them

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

A Microsoft employee recently (~6 months) opened a Github issue to discuss a command line editor for Windows: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/discussions/16440

> convince management of the value

This presupposes that such convincing is even possible. Many, many companies have leadership that are simply terrible at identifying value. If you've never been part of a majority of developers advocating for, if not outright begging for, some huge ROI initiative to get the green light, you are very fortunate.

There are great counterexamples, like Valve, which is known for giving developers an extreme degree of autonomy, and they benefit greatly from that approach. For each Valve, though, there are dozens of companies that manage to succeed despite themselves.

Take Microsoft, for example. One tiny, yet representative, example: the way the Windows Terminal team handled a suggestion from Casey Muratori to take their software from abysmally slow to lightning fast:

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362

A quote from one of the Terminal developers, dismissing the suggestion:

> I believe what you’re doing is describing something that might be considered an entire doctoral research project in performant terminal emulation as “extremely simple” somewhat combatively…

Just how difficult was such an endeavor in actuality? Well, given that Casey implemented his own terminal emulator from scratch and incorporated the functionality he was proposing in a mere weekend... not a whole lot. Relatively minor effort for a huge return on investment. It took Casey explaining the concepts, then providing a working proof of concept, and finally a bunch of backlash online towards the Terminal team to get them to do the right thing for themselves and their users.

At this point ConHost.exe is open source [0] so it is maybe not a stretch to expect Microsoft to open source CMD.EXE at some point.

Though with PowerShell being cross-platform and already open source, I personally don't think there's enough to gain in some sort of better open source CMD.EXE fork. I'd be interested in being proved wrong on that, but I'm also happy enough with PowerShell these days I'm not in a hurry to return to CMD.EXE.

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/tree/main/src/host