I think you underestimate how many hours there have been put into the Linux OS. If the amount of source-code, that makes up Linux, would have been developed commercially at standard costs for the same amount of source-code, Linux would have cost in the order of 1 billion dollars to do.
In fact, Red Hat Linux 7.1 is a far bigger product measured in lines of source-code, than Sun Solaris, and approx. the size of Windows XP.
The big difference between Microsoft and other software companies, is that Microsoft has been very focused on maintaing the value of it's customer's software, that is based on earlier Microsoft products, and that Microsoft products typically were not as future minded as it's competitors. For instance, think of the drive letters. A sick invention, a not very scalable solution, but it worked well when it was invented, and MSFT has kept them in order to maintain backwards compatibility in both applications and Windows knowledge.
Lars. |
