Ok, everyone seems to be beating up on Microsoft per the top comment here.
I have a counter point -
Does anyone ever think what would happen if Microsoft were to disappear tomorrow? How would you get your drivers license? How would you process your mortgage? How would you go about buying tickets for anything? How would you get your groceries and food?
Are we expecting everyone to run Linux? Or shall we say, Ubuntu? Or was it Mint? Can we decide on a specific desktop OS? Can we? Can we pick up a USB wifi dongle or connect a printer and expect it to work? Are you frikkin kidding me? We'd be running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
Get over it, all of you. Frikkin grow up. We've had the thirty years since Linux came on the scene. And what have we done? You'll say - "we've got the server market". Sure. And what is that? Ubuntu, right? Give me a break. If it wasn't for Mark Shuttleworth, even that wouldn't have been there.
We want to be kids. We want to play with our toys in our corner of the room throughout our lives and we want others to clothe and feed us for free. That's what we want. We want to share, but don't want others to make money off it. And what happens? A big corporate comes around giving everything away for free, and we all grab it with both our hands. And 15 years later, we cry that the corporate has gone evil.
We keep complaining about Microsoft on Hacker News, typing on Apples and iPhones and Androids. Are you all delusional? Are you all blind? There is NOTHING free in this world, including lunches.
People pay for things that will work together seamlessly, that takes the least effort to work with. Why? Because software, programs, operating systems are not the end of the world, life is. There are more important things in life that tabs or spaces, or carriage returns and line feeds.
And the only way that can happen, when someone says I'll give $X for Y and you give him Y, rather than twiddling around with Z.
I've had battles with Microsoft by way of IE. I've also battled with Linux. Major battles. But the battles I've had with Microsoft, I got paid for. The battles with Linux? Well, maybe I got music playing on my laptop. Only on mine, mind you!
I think it's time we admitted to ourselves, that we can't decide on anything collectively. I think it's time we stopped being cranky, demanding, tantrum throwing children. We'll all die soon and everyone will be paying for software as a service and we'll all be old farts talking about the good old days, when we could download a program, modify it and run it only on our system.
I'm tired of all your hangups. Holding on to decade old grudges. Dreaming about the glorious future of software that just might have existed if everyone had just the same idea as you.
Grow up, open your eyes, get a life. Stop being so self-centered and churlish. Stop trying to see flaws everywhere except yourself. Stop trying to complain about open source everywhere and see that all kinds of software need to exist.
Go out. Do good for someone. Get paid for it. Come back home. Enjoy dinner with your family. Get a good night's sleep.