[fpgeek]

A Minix monoculture never happened. But what would actually have been wrong with it?

Think of all of Tanenbaum's design decisions that Linus ended up changing. One big reason we know, in detail, what would have been wrong with a Minix monoculture is that it never happened.

[slurgfest]

Assuming that Minix adopted a reasonable license and fixed outstanding issues that make Linux currently better, I'm asking you to tell me what's wrong with that. We have a de facto monoculture of Windows on the PC right now and I don't think that's better.

[fpgeek]

I didn't say what sort of Minix monoculture we might have wound up with. In particular, who says the licensing would have been fixed? Without Linux's success how many people would have thought there was a problem?