At this point in time, not much is known about Windows “8”, as it’s currently referred to. Some are beginning to speculate that Windows 8 will be a “major release”, in a sense that it will have much more features over its predecessor, perhaps in a similar fashion as, dare I say it, Windows Longhorn.

If this indeed is the case, will Microsoft be a lot tougher on partners and employees that leak confidential documents and builds? Looking back on Vista, one of the things that contributed to the PR disaster was the fact that Microsoft failed to deliver much of the exciting things found in Longhorn; people were so disappointed by this, that some in the Windows community even tried to bring Longhorn back from the dead with projects such as Longhorn Reloaded. If Windows 8 will have new features implemented in the development builds that are as new and exciting as what was found in Longhorn it’s likely that they might work harder towards keeping these builds where they belong.

It’s pretty impossible to do this though—I’d bet everything I own that at least a few Windows 8 builds will leak. I mean it’s a given fact of life: the sky is blue, humans need food and water to live, and Windows builds leak. As this is the case, perhaps what they will do is face this fact and throw the biggest and more exciting/important features under the rug, locking them away in a similar fashion to how the superbar and Aero improvements in earlier 7 builds was hidden (maybe they’ll improve on it though, Rafael did manage to unlock all the tasty bits in 6801 and in some of these earlier builds).

Even if Windows 8 doesn’t turn out to be a glorious feature-rich release filled with new and improved goodness, it’s a given that they’ll have some sort of protective measures to make life more difficult for Rafael and the community as a whole.

Editors Note: The opinions expressed herein are that of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the GeekSmack staff nor our community members.