Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is now open source

Microsoft just announced that the Windows Subsystem for Linux is now officially open source. While it doesn't necessarily mean much for traditional desktop Linux, it's still a nice move.

For those who have never used it, or don't know what it is: it's a feature of modern Windows that allows you to run a Linux environment on your Windows machine, without the need for a separate virtual machine or dual booting.

Writing on the official Windows blog the announcement mentions that there's still a couple of bits that are not open source, but a big step forwards for it. It also goes over a brief bit of history of it like how they had to separate it from the Windows code-base to enable Microsoft to keep up with the growing community and feature requests.

Over the years we’ve been incredibly lucky to have a strong community supporting WSL from day 1. We’ve been blessed with people sharing their knowledge, and spending countless hours to help track down bugs, find the best ways to implement new features and improve WSL.

WSL could never have been what it is today without its community. Even without access to WSL’s source code, people have been able to make major contributions that lead to what WSL is now.

This is why we’re incredibly excited to open-source WSL today. We’ve seen how much the community has contributed to WSL without access to the source code, and we can’t wait to see how WSL will evolve now that the community can make direct code contributions to the project.

Pierre Boulay, Microsoft

We really have come a long way from the Microsoft of old.