Linux: Microsoft WSL’s Decade-Long Journey to Open Source

LONDON — Craig Loewen, Microsoft’s senior product manager in charge of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), and Clint Rutkas, principal product manager lead who oversees WSL, at Canonical‘s Ubuntu 25.10 Summit told the tale for the first time of how WSL was finally open sourced. It was a long, strange trip.

The Origins of WSL in Project Astoria

You see, WSL’s story began back in 2010 with Project Astoria, aka Windows Bridge for Android. This stillborn project was intended to enable people to run Android apps on Windows Phone via a…