TLDR: If installing Linux and running Windows programs on it were as easy installing windows and running Windows on that, then Linux would drive windows out of the sector. That’s basic economics.
Wanna crush the payware market? Make superior freeware. Superior by the consumer’s definition, not yours.
It’s just like how legalizing drugs would crush the drug cartels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand#Determinants
If Brand X insulin is just as good, available, and free, then selling Brand Y insulin becomes nearly impossible.
Brand X insulin, freeware OSs, just isn’t aren’t as good in this case. Why they arent as good is a catch 22 at this point. The payware market makes real 100% compatibility impossible because of patented code, but patented code is only possible because the OSS community doesn’t threaten the payware it enables. Coders are collectively bought off. The vast majority of them have dreams of being Steve Jobs when they grow up and have no interest in threatening the system that makes that dream a potential reality.
“You don’t understand. Ferengi workers don’t want to stop the exploitation, we want to find a way to become the exploiters.” ~Rom, DS9
Sidenote: I often wonder if this is partly why scientists are never heads of state. Maybe it’s like herding cats, and they can’t rise to power because of their refusal to cooperate vs the organized predators. I mean isn’t that what really put humans on top? Culture? Which is just shorthand for co-operation?
Similarly, the OSS community’s various brains are all eager to be in charge and refuse to admit when it’s time to copy what works and be team players. It’s like the problem of confirmation in science.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33719/title/Science-s-Reproducibility-Problem/
Everyone wants to discover/invent something new, rather than perfect (confirm) what’s already working.
The ownership model on the other hand solves that problem through force. Like how the Manhattan project corralled said cats with the human equivalent of tuna, cages, and squirt guns. Like how scientists have always been managed through out history. Someone is always running them. Same with coders. Some government or corporation owns all of them. Why?
Anyway, the continued success of Windows is often blamed on consumer holdouts. And brand loyalty but that’s not it, or at least not in the way that’s often implied. It’s not mindless cultish devotion. It’s not even really habit. It’s prudent risk aversion. Just imagine a small business switching over and how difficult, costly, and risky that is. Change is inherently dangerous. Though yes it is also an opportunity.
Windows makes cash partly because of vendor lock, true, but mostly because of ease of use. Linux people spend a lot of time telling everyone how easy Linux is, but having to make that argument exposes the contradiction. Plus the argument implies that everyone who disagrees is simply stupid which is both insulting and false. That also isn’t the best way to make converts.
Imagine however if they went even further and made Linux even EASIER than upgrading or reinstalling windows? Like imagine if I could just boot from a Linux USB and it virtualizes or converts my system and I end up with my Windows in Linux? Ease like that costs piles money and the people spending piles of money constantly choose enterprise closed source solutions.
Believing all those people and businesses are fools is pure self serving dogma.
Here’s the mind numbing complexity in play: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Virtualization_Getting_Started_Guide/
The whole existence of Linux forums is evidence of the demand and the problem. They are thick with threads from various users wanting to do things on Linux they did on windows and can’t under Linux. They are so common it’s a chore to even deal with them. Very rarely does the thread end with “Hey thanks! That completely solved my problem!” Most are unanswered, impossible, or TOUSs (Threadnoughts Of Unusual Size.)
Almost always the answer boils down to “stop wanting what you want and want this instead.” Which granted can be a valid response, but market demand isn’t a function of validity. It may simply be that your choice is change things or be right. That’s disturbing of course. But there it is.
In any case it’s clear to me there’s MASSIVE unmet demand for a true windows/mac alternative, something like Linux XP. (Or Linux versions of every MS and Mac OS.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_XP
And while I understand why it doesn’t exist from a technical/legal perspective. (Brain drain and active payware sabotage thanks to licensing and patents.) The facts remains that if it came into existence, it would quickly dominate.
If reformers like the the EFF and Falkvinge and The Pirate Party wanted to really effect change, they need only gut demand for payware by losing the greed and ego of the current OSS community. Herd some cats. Make a Windows killer.
This impasse plays right into the biases on both sides, that all Linux people are haughty high tech scoffing hipsters, and that all Windows/Mac users are mindless hive mind drooling vegetable brains. Neither of which are ever completely true.
Mac also thrives because of the fact that Linux is not near as easy as some fans claim. Any time someone says they have tried they get scoffed at for not trying X flavor with Y desktop. Android vs mac teaches this same lesson. There’s 60 million versions of android, but perceptually only 1 iPhone with a straight chain of upgrades.
The old barb has applied for decades: Unix, so many standards to choose from. If all that brain power united
In any case blaming the consumer sector at all for keeping windows alive, when it’s the enterprise/government money and corporate machines that really run the show. Major university computer departments often use proprietary software. They don’t use Microsoft and payware out of ignorance. These are institutions that often train PHDs in computer science. There’s a reason the UK’s nuclear submarines still run their custom version of XP.
Ubuntu overtly dropped the branding “Linux for people” and started banning people from the forum for commenting on the returning elitist attitude. That was the last time I ever saw a Linux distro even momentarily take the right attitude strategically. But rather quickly they started falling back into the same old reinvent the wheel, shame anyone who complains, model.
For contrast imagine what would happen if an open source machine could play major console games at half the price. Imagine the threat Microsoft and Sony would perceive, and how they would respond. That is what Linux seemingly isn’t even trying to be: A real threat to the model.
And it’s clear imo why. Because all those coders live off that same industry. We don’t have a solid windows killer for the same reason we don’t have a plain english coding language.
