Precursor to Vista, Longhorn reloaded project dies

It should come as no surprise that Microsoft doesn’t want anyone working on its older operating systems, trying to revive them and then making the whole thing available for free download. That was the idea behind the Longhorn Reloaded project which has received cease and desist orders straight from Redmond.

Those behind the Longhorn Reloaded project wanted to keep Longhorn alive because it had some features that did not make it into the final build of Vista. Longhorn reloaded revived WinFS, among other features that got nixed in Vista.

The hope was to keep releasing new versions of Longhorn and improve on Microsoft’s original vision for Longhorn. That is no longer going to happen, all traces of the project are about to be removed, download links will be deleted and before long we will all be asking, Longhorn, isn’t that a steakhouse?

One of the project leaders behind Longhorn Reloaded was quite depressed, “It deeply saddens me that although Microsoft have known about this project for many months they only issued us with this notice a few days after we started to distribute the ISO via torrents and ftp server.”

I understand that Microsoft would rather have people buy Vista but once something is on the internet, it’s on the internet. The Longhorn reloaded site may die but don’t be surprised if the project crops up on other Torrent, FTP or P2P sharing sites.  Though, all development on the project has now stopped so there will be no more improvements or bug fixes.

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• Microsoft: Windows Vista is misunderstood
• Microsoft re-releases misunderstood Vista features document