Once an organisation puts money first before the quality of it’s products (and most companies will do this to some extent) that will be true.

If, however, a project starts that is initially powered by the want, need and love of said project and it’s ability to excel and be the best possible product, then the money from support becomes a nice side effect that helps to keep the product afloat and pay for the resources (in time, bandwidth etc) that it consumes.

Most of the time the project is still driven by the community and developer’s drive towards perfection rather than the cash.

For the next version of Windows to be open source (assuming that it would happen.. it won’t), Microsoft would have to say bye-bye to all the revenue they currently get from licensing. Assuming that’s $1 per license.. is 50 million licenses worldwide a fair estimate ? That’s just 50 million dollars worth of income that they just turned their backs on. They already charge for support and corporate licensing, so that’s just (in their eyes) revenue lost.

They can’t do that, they won’t do it. It was easier in a sense for Solaris because they were a dominant server platform, not a dominant user space platform. In many ways, the complexity of moving server platforms is less (because you can carefully control what software goes on a server). I’m generalizing a lot, of course.. but Solaris and Windows aren’t comparable in that sense.

Control means more potential for profit down the line. Once they open the source, they lose a large chunk of that control. Imagine if third parties come up with service packs or expansions ? At a cheaper price than Microsoft ? Opening the source leads (in their mind) to the loss of countless revenue earning opportunities, both present and in the future.