[laumars]

1. You can use UNIX style slashes in NT and it works fine. It’s just the default is to represent them using \ because CP/M and DOS originally used / as flag prefixes back before their respective file systems supported hierarchical directories.

To be honest your point is a little like moaning that Windows 10 doesn’t use GRUB or that FreeBSD doesn’t use systemd. Sometimes those differences are the differentiators, ie part of the OS design, and thus why you’d pick one OS over another OS.

2. CIFS and NFS is a protocol not a file system. Also see answer to point 1.

3. Product names are just another form of metadata. If you want 1st party Microsoft support then naturally you’d use a Microsoft operating system. Also see my reply to point 1.

4. You’re not asking for collaboration though. You’re asking for uniformity. Collaboration is different solutions that agree on supporting the same standards. Uniformity is when the same solutions are pushed on every platform. The later is a monopoly and that is very the antipathy of what Linux stands for.