- Build 2025 was AI, but Microsoft also made open source WSL
- The company knows how valuable its taxpayers community has been
- Microsoft wants users to “participate in a problem solving and learn together as a community”
Microsoft has a Windows Subsystem of Open Origin for Linux at its Annual Software and Web Developer Conference, Microsoft Build 2025.
Most of the components are now open source, with the exception of some elements directly linked to Windows, with the source code available in GITHUB.
Microsoft, Microsoft, has opened it to direct contributions, development of characteristics and errors corrections of the community in general, after recognizing that the community has already contributed significantly before its open supply.
“As the community behind WSL grew, WSL obtained more functions, such as GPU support, graphic applications support (through WSLG) and Systemd support,” explained Pierre Boulay from Microsoft. “It was eventually clear that to keep up with the growing community and the requests for presentations, WSL had to move faster and send separately from the windows.”
Boulay shared part of the history of WSL, including its Windows separation in 2021 when it became its own package, distributed through Microsoft Store.
“WSL could never have been what it is today without your community. Even without access to the WSL source code, people have been able to make great contributions that lead to what WSL is now,” Boulay added.
Despite the importance of WSL becoming open source, communications director Frank X Shaw only wrote a brief note about it in the conference news book. An extract says: “It facilitates collaboration between WSL users, which allows them to participate in problem solving and learn together as a community.”
As expected, the central construction announcements focused on artificial intelligence, with numerous updates issued to the company’s co -ilot agents to increase productivity in Microsoft 365 applications.
