I completely agree - there is nothing that prevents Windows developers from sharing code. However, the current state of affiars is that a very small percentage of Windows software is released under Open Source, GNU Copyleft, or similar licensing models.
For the record, I am a Windows developer that came from a strong UNIX background. I've seen both sides of the discussion and prefer to use UNIX-based OS's (preferably Solaris) whenever I can. I work on back-end services and I think writing those services is much easier under Solaris than Windows NT.
Personally, I think developing on a Unix-based OS is easier than Windows. I don't want to start an editor war but using the GNU toolkit as an environment beats Visual Studio any day of the week. Emacs has everything Visual Studio has (color syntax support, compilaion, and integrated debugging via GDB, etc.). Gcc, perl, and other tools are also more directed to the development community.
Also, the development community itself follows more of a traditional scientific community. Ideas and source code is released to the community for peer review; this is a critical element of the scientific process. The end result is that the developer and the consumer end up with better software. From my perspective, the Apache web server is the perfect example of what can happen when everybody works together. Since most Windows software is designed to generate revenue, the ideas and source code are closely guarded secrets and any errors in the software are regarded as hits against profit.
At this point, you're probably asking, "So what? How does this make development on Linux easier?" A great toolkit combined with an active development community means your problem has probably been solved by someone else. Linux just happens to be the OS these ideas are implemented on. There is nothing intrinsic about Linux that makes it easier for development than, for example, Solaris. It's the people (in this case, the developers) that make a difference. The OS, toolkits, and development environments are (and should be) interchangeable. It's the people and processes that truelly make Linux development a much better platform than Windows. -- Josh
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For the record, I am a Windows developer that came from a strong UNIX background. I've seen both sides of the discussion and prefer to use UNIX-based OS's (preferably Solaris) whenever I can. I work on back-end services and I think writing those services is much easier under Solaris than Windows NT.
Also, the development community itself follows more of a traditional scientific community. Ideas and source code is released to the community for peer review; this is a critical element of the scientific process. The end result is that the developer and the consumer end up with better software. From my perspective, the Apache web server is the perfect example of what can happen when everybody works together. Since most Windows software is designed to generate revenue, the ideas and source code are closely guarded secrets and any errors in the software are regarded as hits against profit.
At this point, you're probably asking, "So what? How does this make development on Linux easier?" A great toolkit combined with an active development community means your problem has probably been solved by someone else. Linux just happens to be the OS these ideas are implemented on. There is nothing intrinsic about Linux that makes it easier for development than, for example, Solaris. It's the people (in this case, the developers) that make a difference. The OS, toolkits, and development environments are (and should be) interchangeable. It's the people and processes that truelly make Linux development a much better platform than Windows. -- Josh