Microsoft's Midori operating-system skunkworks project soldiers on
Summary: A new research paper makes a not-so-thinly-veiled reference to Microsoft's secret project to develop a non-Windows-based operating system and programming environment. — Midori — the Microsoft skunkworks …
Context & Ripple Effects
Midori is the third act in a line of Microsoft efforts to build an operating system that does not depend on Windows: the company's 'Cloud OS' work took shape back in 2007, and in 2010 Microsoft Research showed off the prototype 'Menlo' mobile phone, which raised questions about whether Microsoft would ever break its mobile strategy free of Windows. A new research paper's thinly veiled reference to the project is the first public confirmation since then that Midori — a non-Windows-based OS and programming environment — is still funded and moving.
The timing matters: the confirmation lands days after the first Windows Phone 8 devices went on sale in the US and with Windows 8 freshly launched, so Microsoft is publicly investing in a post-Windows hedge at the very moment it is asking developers and partners to bet on its newest Windows generation. The story travelled widely on pickup from Neowin, Softpedia News and TechSpot, reflecting how much interest any crack in the Windows-only narrative draws.
First-order effects
- Microsoft Research retains a funded, parallel operating-system and programming-environment effort outside the Windows organization, giving the company a working alternative should Windows' architecture prove limiting.
- Developers and Microsoft partners now have documented evidence that Redmond is hedging beyond Windows, which colors how they evaluate long-term commitments to the just-launched Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 platforms.
Second-order effects
- Rival platform holders — Apple, Google and Linux distributors — can read sustained skunkworks investment as Microsoft conceding internally that Windows alone may not carry it through the post-PC shift, sharpening their own platform pitches.
- Inside Microsoft, a viable non-Windows environment creates internal competition for talent and roadmap attention between the Windows divisions and the research arm, pressuring Windows leadership to justify the incumbent stack.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds across the Cloud OS, Menlo and Midori efforts, Microsoft's real strategy becomes portfolio insurance: keeping successor platforms incubated in secret so a platform transition, if ever forced, starts from working code rather than a blank page.
- Sustained secrecy around such projects also points toward a structural norm among major platform vendors — parallel OS development as standard risk management — which regulators and enterprise buyers may eventually have to account for when assessing vendor lock-in.
The trend: Large platform vendors increasingly run secret parallel operating-system skunkworks as insurance against their incumbent platform losing relevance, with Microsoft's Cloud OS-to-Menlo-to-Midori lineage the clearest example.