That's kind of the key idea behind Microsoft's building of its monopoly: paying developers to produce software for its OS. Eventually you could get everything for Windows and software at random for another OS. The equilibrium here seems to be a for a single dominant OS maker.
Reminds me of the Dvorak v. Qwerty keyboard layouts. The market has space for a single dominant keyboard type. Individuals can choose between Dvorak (and variants) or Qwerty, but since so many people use Qwerty, everything is designed based on that. If Dvorak reaches a tipping point, everyone would likely abandon Qwerty.
Does anyone thing the expansion of open source makes it more likely that the OS market is trending towards being a multi-power field?
That's kind of the key idea behind Microsoft's building of its monopoly: paying developers to produce software for its OS.
Well, it is more subtle than that. If you are a large corporation, you might have 100,000 desktops, and since Windows came out you might have bought 0.5-1M licenses. That's an awful lot. Why would you do this? Because the software you absolutely depend on to run this business is written internally, and the cost of doing this in a Microsoft tool like VB (historically) is low enough to make it worthwhile. Microsoft has always cultivated its developer ecosystem well. Apple are good now, but I remember the dark days of the 90s when you never knew when a key Apple technology you depended on they would simply abandon (e.g. OpenDoc).
Reminds me of the Dvorak v. Qwerty keyboard layouts. The market has space for a single dominant keyboard type. Individuals can choose between Dvorak (and variants) or Qwerty, but since so many people use Qwerty, everything is designed based on that. If Dvorak reaches a tipping point, everyone would likely abandon Qwerty.
Does anyone thing the expansion of open source makes it more likely that the OS market is trending towards being a multi-power field?