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>I don't understand why Google hasn't done this yet. If Google or some similar company were to make a desktop OS, it would probably be packed with so many mone
by scythe 6y ago
>I don't understand why Google hasn't done this yet.
If Google or some similar company were to make a desktop OS, it would probably be packed with so many monetization "features" that the free software community wouldn't be very interested and may even see it as a threat. Chrome OS already demonstrated most of this pattern.
The elementary project has done some great work with their UI, but the limitations of a decentralized funding model mean that it just isn't as complete as the major OSes. Meanwhile the jousting between Red Hat and Canonical over control of the GNOME ecosystem alienates a lot of users. Meanwhile corporate control of Qt has limited KDE's popularity. In all three cases the organizational problems associated with developing a truly freedom-preserving OS in a profit-oriented world crop up in different ways. Google taking over doesn't sound like a solution to me.
Some kind of alliance between free software developers and hardware manufacturers has long been dreamt about but hasn't materialized over the last two decades. All too often, Linux OEMs attach a half-baked homegrown distribution and their hardware tries to rely on it. We've also hoped that democratic countries will decide that a free and open-source operating system would be good for national security and fund development. In practice, interest has mostly come from Russia and China, with user freedom off the priority list.
Google isn't a deity. They don't exist to serve humanity but rather their investors. The organization problem continues to be difficult.