Virtues of Monoculture, Or Why Microsoft Wins

blackbearnh writes to ask, "Why does Microsoft win the development environment war so often, when we all know it's a lifetime lock-in to Windows? Perhaps it's because the open source community offers too much choice." From the post: "Microsoft offers the certainty of no choices. Choice isn't always good, and the open source community sometimes offers far too many ways to skin the same cat, choices that are born more out of pride, ego, or stubbornness than a genuine need for two different paths. I won't point fingers, everyone knows examples... The reality is that there are good, practical reasons that drive people into the arms of the Redmond tool set, and we need to accept that as a fact and learn from it, rather than shake our fists and curse the darkness."

Comments

LMAO Non free finally wins.

[twitter]

For instance, the only reason we've not released a port to linux - a free version, of course, we'd like to give back to the community - is because there is no standard GUI layer. It's a hodgepodge of these widgets and those widgets, this license and that license (really meaning, these liabilities and those liabilities.) Windows provides all that. Free. Built in.

Sure, everone knows that M$ licensing and development is far less complicated or expensive than gpl code. Why, you should see how much I have to pay my accountants and lawyers to keep track of the terms on gcc, kde, gnome and so on and so forth. The burden this passes on to my users is just unimaginable. I'm going to give all of that up right now and buy OSX, Vista, Visual Studio and half a dozen software packages that I need to get real work done on these real platforms. Apt-getting is just too complicated. I give up, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, I am truly sorry that I have deprived your companies of well earned revenues over the last seven years that I've been without your spiffy, easy to use, license, develop and distribute software. What was I thinking as I simply did my work without worry or cost?

The day the linux core gets BUILT-IN windowing and graphics, and I do NOT mean just xwindows or xwindows plus yet another sometimes-there and restrictively licensed widget set, is the day we make a port that we will release to the community.

apt-get install kdevelop. Pay attention to the recommended and suggested packages and go. It's that easy. There are others that may be easier, but KDE's package will be more familiar to you. Hope to see your work soon, Happy hacking!