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Let's have a thought experiment: Tomorrow the government passes a law that outlaws the sale of Windows or any Microsoft alternative OS starting 1 year from now.
by riskable 6y ago
Let's have a thought experiment: Tomorrow the government passes a law that outlaws the sale of Windows or any Microsoft alternative OS starting 1 year from now. This law is absolute and cannot be undone before the deadline.
What do you think would happen? Would the world just stop buying new computers? Would Windows programmers just give up and become say, blacksmiths?
Hell no! What would happen is the world would move on from Windows and the world would be a better place for it.
I suspect that dozens of alternative OSes would pop up (many based on Linux) and we'd start to get some real competition in the consumer space. Something that's been desperately needed for like two decades now.
It would be like a gold rush as developers, big companies, and startups in seemingly limitless number arise to fill every "gap" in the market that opened up.
- robertlagrant 6y agoSeems a pointless thought experiment. If governments banned ARM and Intel chips then there'd also be lots of new companies. So what?
- jodrellblank 6y ago> "What do you think would happen?" Microsoft would sell something else (e.g. Office365, or hardware) and give free Windows licenses with it, or sell them via a different government (international sales), or lobby so the law gets undone 1 minute after the deadline, or some other loophole. > "Hell no! What would happen is the world would move on from Windows and the world would be a better place for it." Linux users can't make Linux desirable, so they want authority to ban the competition. So much for "freedom". > "Something that's been desperately needed for like two decades now." People weren't interested enough in buying BeOS, and Linux organisations can't even give it away for free. What evidence of "desperate need" are you seeing?