Along came IBM with Microsoft and an operating system standard emerged for software development.
Today, over 85% of all computers around the world are compatible with the Microsoft software standard.
Companies today, are able maximize their profits by creating software that is compatible with the vast majority of computers. No longer do they need to spend valuable man-years in adapting their software toward the lowest common denominator.
No matter how hard you try, the lowest common denominator will always produce software that is unable to exploit new capabilities. The result is poor software for everyone.
How many of you remember why almost all of the early software was text based only? Graphics interfaces were not standardized and ASCII was the only common interface between the multiple operating systems and languages available. Even ASCII was not universal, since companies like IBM continued to insist upon EBCDIC as their binary representation of text.
Love it or hate it, Microsoft created a standard. Today, we see software at very low costs, which would simply be impossible to do without a common software environment.
Instead of creating software chaos once again, we must focus upon fixing the problems within the Microsoft operating system.
Any way you slice it, if even half of the content of this article is correct, Microsoft has become a "sell". The more agressive will sell short.
The good thing for you (and everyone else) is that there is a group of people who have decided that the cost of MS is too high and have created an alternative (based on the work of Linus) that is causing MS to rethink their pricing and licensing. My customers are happy either way.
Rather than trying to fix MS, I'm all for bringing more choice into the market place and leveling the playing field. This will work for OS or Apps, as far as I'm concerned.
Microsoft arose when the home computer market took off. A time when system resources were nonexistent. When top of the line pc clones had what, 640k memory, and 10-20 Megabyte drives. How to fit an OS into those restraints? Simple, strip any and all unnecessary standard features till you have a monolithic skeleton devoid of multiuser functionality, including security.
Billy Innovator's port of then existing computer science is incapable of maturing into tommorows OS without a complete overhaul. As this article alludes to, the prospect of doing this with 'free' and posix compliant alternatives is ludicrous. Good luck Billy Boy.
Besides, I prefer viable competition. Keeps the players on guard.
Focus upon fixing the problems within the Microsoft operating system? More lipstick will not work.
Beggin' yer pardon, sorr, but who's "we"? If there are problems within the Microsoft operating system, it's up to Microsoft to fix them, not you and the little paper-clip guy in your pocket.
And don't be painting Linux to be a return to chaos... it's not like Unix is something new and different, after all.