You have a point. Anyone can develop software for windows. It's not walled off at all. There are security prompts in place when you start doing unsafe things bu

You have a point. Anyone can develop software for windows. It's not walled off at all. There are security prompts in place when you start doing unsafe things but you can pretty much do anything. The only thing walled off is the source code but nobody is referring to that. I think people are associating walled garden with closed source. This is not a consistent association because there is one operating system that is, in actuality, a true walled garden where the term fits: iOS is a walled garden. The characterization of the term here is entirely different from windows or Linux. Thus the parent is also correct about his point. If you use a Linux distro exclusively with a package manager. It is effectively as if you are in a walled garden. It is just like using the app store on macos exclusively.