OSNews

I don't necessarily want another proprietary operating system, but I'm enough of a realist to know that software doesn't get developed up to a high standard of quality unless the developers are getting paid, and the easiest way to make a return on ones investment is to sell the product at a fair price. The trouble with open source operating systems is that, when push comes to shove, there's very little money to be made from one on the home desktop. It works fine in a professional setting because most companies are willing to pay for support contracts and other services, so companies like Red Hat can make their money that way and give the operating system itself out at no cost. Home users, however, won't typically go in for such a plan and so the easiest way to make a high quality product they will want is to sell it and, where something like GNU/Linux is concerned, selling to home users is impractical as they can just get it for free anyway. This is one of the reasons why Linux on the average home desktop doesn't work: Most companies are concentrating on the corporate workstation and server since those markets are the cash cows and so home users are considered last if at all. I see no real way to avoid this except to sell a proprietary system and, unlike a lot of people here, I don't dislike the idea of proprietary software. A group of people create something and, if it's successful, they have the right to proffit from their good work. I don't much care for the licenses of most proprietary software, but that's a problem with lawyers not with the idea of closed software in and of itself.