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2-Year Study Shows Mac Users Downloading More Open Source Software

Posted by timothy on from the wait-what-kind-of-lies? dept.

AmyVernon writes "We combed through about two years' worth of data on SourceForge, looking at the platforms of the users who downloaded projects, and millions more Mac users are downloading open source projects now than were in February 2010. In the same time, Windows downloads have increased by a much smaller percentage and Linux downloads have actually declined." I wonder how much of this last part can be chalked up to the ever-better download infrastructure that the various Linux distros have. (Note: SourceForge and Slashdot are both part of Geeknet.)

1 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I wonder.... by Anthony+Mouse · · Score: 1, Troll

    Obvious troll is obvious (especially when Linux still has better than 60% of the server market and an even larger share of small servers), but realistically this isn't the end of the world for open source. This is people replacing Windows with MacOS. Which can only be a good thing for Linux, because it helps break Windows lock-in.

    Applications developed only for Windows rarely run properly on Linux. Applications developed with portability to MacOS in mind get a Linux port nearly for free, because MacOS and Linux share the *nix APIs and you've already separated out all of the platform-specific bits of the code to do the Mac port, plus you've then probably used some kind of cross-platform framework like qt and avoided MS lock-in like .NET.

    So the win follows: MacOS achieves a critical mass to get third parties to target it as a development platform and stop writing Windows-locked applications. Then those applications are either easily ported to Linux or someone implements a MacOS equivalent of WINE which will be easier to do and more seamless because of the greater level of similarity between two Unix-like operating systems than between Linux and Windows and because unlike Microsoft, Apple doesn't go out of their way to keep their platform a moving target to keep Linux from achieving compatibility. Linux then solves one of the greatest long-standing barriers to increased adoption, namely support for third party applications.

    Obviously the death of open source, that.