[carlosjobim]

The accumulation of wasted man-hours for developers and users. Without the allure of "free", I believe there would have been ample competition for more user friendly paid software doing what Linux is used for now. With the bonus that the developers would have been paid for their work and that tech giants would have to pay for their tech rather than use unpaid labour for free. (I know some of them also contribute to open source)

[philistine]

The point view that Linux is a net negative for the world is incompétence to understand the field. To believe that a commercial offering is absolutely better than an open-source offering is so childish. A world without Linux could be better, sure. But there’s only a tiny little chance of it happening.

[carlosjobim]

It can only be speculation, but it's my belief. Linux became a server system for big applications. Who benefits most from such software are huge businesses. Who pays for their benefit are the Linux developers doing very specialized and competent work for free.

Why is there no consumer friendly solution for having a server connected at home and publishing your own website to the world, without having to be very skilled at computers? There are consumer friendly solutions for everything else: office suites, e-mailing, photo editing, all sorts of creativity. Consumers are now regulated to posting their online stuff on social media, because that is what is accessible to them. And I want to blame Linux partly for this, because the great allure of "free" halted any consumer solution.