[Asooka]

> That was probably the most surprising part of the entire experiment: internally, Windows has changed enormously over the decades, yet the application interface has stayed so stable that code written in the mid-1980s still looks completely familiar.

Imagine if Linux stuck to that same level of interface compatibility. Think of the thousands of man-hours lost to rewriting perfectly good code just chasing the new shiny thing. In an OS built by volunteers we're wasting all developers' time to rebuild their software for the new interface, instead of having on developer spend time to keep the old interface working with the new implementation. And don't try to go "uhm akchyually Linux is the kernel and the kernel is stable", nobody cares. I mean the whole OS, from the kernel to the GUI layer. Is it any surprise that the best tools on Linux are all console programs using the POSIX interface, which has remained stable for the lifetime of the OS? I would go as far as to say that GTK is the Linux Desktop's original sin (followed closely by Qt). Motif and CDE were already established as the Unix GUI API, they should have been reimplemented with an optional separate GTK-native API. Maybe the next generation will learn from our mistakes.

[ezst]

Who exactly in the Linux world is supposed to get paid wonderfully to keep mountains of old cruft and technical debt in working order? Not to say I'm insensitive to your point, but when whole UI frameworks are amateurs' passion-projects, the practical burden of maintenance has very real implications. That's essentially the whole story behind the Linux desktop losing Xorg.

[mschuster91]

In the end, it's always the old problem, how to properly fund open source projects.

Maybe with the current political events and subsequent changes in priorities we'll see EU governments ponying up some money under "digital sovereignty" programs - but given the rabid opposition to systemd (funded by RedHat), I fear that any attempt by the EU to get some order into the chaos will be met with just the same toxicity.

[ezst]

> Maybe with the current political events and subsequent changes in priorities we'll see EU governments ponying up some money

Those wheels are already spinning at a fast pace, the French government has its own NixOS-based distro for public servants¹, teams-up with the German and Dutch governments to develop a productivity suite as to not rely on MSOffice², NLNet sponsors many "infrastructure-level" initiatives though NGI Zero³ (many in the area of networking, computer design, federated/P2P communication protocols, …)

¹: https://github.com/rlahfa-dinum/securix ²: https://www.opendesk.eu/en ; https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/ ³: https://nlnet.nl/project/

[mschuster91]

Money is one thing, it's desperately needed.

The key question is, who will call the shots? That's the most pressing problem with many open-source projects without commercial backers - they completely lack focus, unless there is either some sort of BDFL providing the guardrails (be it Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Daniel Stenberg, Fabrice Bellard or the other usual suspects), or someone backed by serious financial firepower uses said influence (i.e. Lennart Poettering of systemd).

Particularly something like an office / productivity suite is ripe for conflicts. One group of users (i.e. stingy governments) want something that can run on computers that would be more fitting in a museum. Other groups want pixel-perfect compatibility with Microsoft products, even if it results in a ton of extra work. Others don't want LDAP support for the email client's address book, but instead other stuff like an integration into Okta or whatever other SaaS. And either someone will get empowered to make such decisions by everyone involved... or it will be a lot of money wasted or a lot of chaos.

[ezst]

Not saying that more governance and focus wouldn't bring more bang for buck, but from the lists I sent, you would notice a pattern of investing on open standards and vendor-agnostic infrastructure. It makes servicing specific needs overall easier, because the whole field is elevated through easier interop and efficiency. If LDAP, email, GUI apps and videoconferencing become easier, making an "LDAP-enabled GUI email client that does group calls" that's perfect your (industry/trade/…) needs goes from "near impossible, requires millions in CAPEX" to "we'll have it in a matter of days/weeks".

The other nice thing is, the whole world benefits from it, for free. The only losers are the monopolists and other societal parasites.

[CopyOnWrite]

Thanks, we (Linux/BSD) users cannot bring up this topic often enough.

I totally understand, that it cannot work unless money is there, which simply is not, in the Linux desktop world. Compatibility is expensive, hard work and not much fun.

I do not think, this will ever change, in the end, the web/Electron has won, desktop operating systems are less important compared to mobile, so who should invest in a stable GUI platform for Linux?

By now, basically all applications I rely on are CLI programs (posix), web or Electron and a few simple GUI tools (PDF viewer, ...) which can easily replaced.

How is the saying: If you want a portable GUI application for Linux, target Win32 and run it via Wine.

[markus_zhang]

OSS is essentially more chaotic as everyone as his/her own ideas. It’s not too different in a corporation but when someone is in control it’s easier to centralize things.

[velcrovan]

Ah but what about (dun dun dun) “innovation”