“If some foreign company wants to build a reliable OS, the market is open the way it was for the Japanese car companies competing against Ford and GM.”
We already had a great OS that was built right here - by IBM. It was called OS/2. But the Press lied about it and took Microsoft Windows side in the OS/2 wars and IBM cowards surrendered the fight.
But, a small band of dedicated techies bought the OEM rights to OS/2 and improved it. They developed and released eComStation.
I have been using eComStation for 8 years. It is highly reliable and extremely well-supported. Version 2.0 is due out soon.
You needed an EE PhD to even install it.
There was once a dual boot OS/2 platform at work that surely now resides in Purgatory.
I think the press was stupid enough to believe MS's "product release announcements".
And, if memory serves, that was the birth of Vapor Ware.