&gt; Midori is dead, so it doesn&#x27;t push any envelopes. S<p>&quot;Dead&quot;? how many research OS&#x27;s aren&#x27;t &quot;dead&quot;? The project being completed just means the active research has stopped. The whole point of making a research project like this is to find some interesting bits of knowledge that you can incorporate into other projects.<p>I&#x27;m sure this was already useful for .NET native, and will have bits (or at least lessons learned) for every ms. language and OS down the road.<p>&gt;  What &quot;operating systems research&quot; does Windows 10 actually represent?<p>I&#x27;m sure there are some fancy bits buried in it. The new JIT in .NET 4.6 is pretty fancy, for example (even though it isn&#x27;t strictly OS research it&#x27;s pretty tightly tied to the OS given how the universal app platform and store works). Win 10 is indeed mostly a polish release from Windows 8.1 (A few years ago it surely would have been called Windows 8.2 or Windows 8.1SP1). I think the naming was just part of the strategy to <i>stop</i> bumping major versions, like OS X.