There has been a lot of fuss made about the future of the Linux desktop. It has been going on as long as there has been a Linux desktop to fuss over, and not for no reason. The Linux desktop is a wilderness: desktop environments, widget toolkits, package formats, and various backend architectural things all occupying the same space and competing, both with each other and with the Titans in the proprietary realm. It's a lot to sort out, even for people who thrive on technical challenges and are impassioned by the Free and Open Source ethos. For the mundane user, it's just opaque. They don't see technical challenges as exciting, they see them as annoyances. To them, if they even understand it, the FOSS movement is nice but not of consequence if it can't deliver at least a similar experience as their tried and true Win/Mac systems.
The key, I think, to this failure of the Linux desktop to reach mainstream competitiveness is that there is no company pushing for it, no financial incentive. Yes, there are companies behind Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Red Hat, and SUSE but they are focussed on the enterprise use case, NOT general desktop computing. They are not concerned about Blu-Ray support or whether or not Netflix works. All of the niceties that exist on Linux for general use computing were delivered by conscientious members of the community who cared enough to step up and try to solve some of these issues. And that goodwill is the strength of the FOSS world, but it is not enough on its own. To develop a software solution to a problem is one thing, to maintain and improve it is quite another. Eventually the goodwill runs out at about the same time as the rent comes due and the project goes on the back burner.
The ascent of Linux at all is due its application in servers, supercomputers and embedded systems. The bulk of this work was financed by institutional interests with deep pockets. Which brings me to my point: if getting a sustained, focussed effort on a project is a function of financial support, who is the sugar daddy that is going to bring the Linux desktop to the level of a polished product for mass desktop use? The answer is simple: Us!
Let's back up a little, so I can explain. From Wikipedia: A cooperative ("coop") or co-operative ("co-op") is an autonomous association of persons who voluntarily cooperate for their mutual, social, economic, and cultural benefit. For Linux desktop users, the mutual, social and cultural benefits are already there, that is by far the community's deepest asset. But economic? That's where we are weak. To hardware manufacturers and suppliers, we are the red-headed step-child: too niche to really be able to support, to big to totally ignore. We get also-ran driver support, and rely heavily on unpaid work by developers to write the software of tomorrow. It seems to me that the cooperative economic model is a natural fit for advancing the FOSS movement out of its geeky niche and into a legitimate replacement for closed software.
More on this in later posts...
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