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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

Linux users who understand where Linux come from (don't bag Linux users under a single umbrella, there's a wide variety of them) have suffered from proprietary software companies not supporting their OS/distros (Adobe, Microsoft, just to pick a few) or seen the effect of "bad proprietary apps" (Chrome systematically trying to spy on you, software with backdoors, etc... that it's going to be a difficult case to come and say "this time, it's different" with a new proprietary app offering.

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>have suffered from proprietary software companies not supporting their OS/distros (Adobe, Microsoft, just to pick a few)

And here lies the main point - they believe that many users will simply reject their proprietary software on principle. If the community was seen to embrace proprietary, which is what I'm calling for in the article, they might just support Linux.

Also worth noting that the largest contributor to the Linux kernel is... Microsoft.

> many users will simply reject their proprietary software on principle.

Yes, because we've grown tired of companies abusing their relationships with customers: abandoning products and leaving them useless, charging more and more for the same or less levels of support, removing features, suing users for repairing their own property... The list goes on. Sure, similar issues can happen with FOSS, but at least you have some recourse if the creators disappear.

> Also worth noting that the largest contributor to the Linux kernel is... Microsoft.

Yes, but only now. And only because they did what they could to kill Linux, and they still lost. That former behavior is the kind of thing we like to never be an issue in the first place.

Linux would never had taken off without the contributions of companies like IBM, Intel, Oracle, SGI, Cray,....

Which aren't properly any FOSS angels, when we examine their product portfolio.

Actually IBM is the king of patent submissions.

Sure, but it probably also wouldn't have taken off without its license either.

In that I agree, only because it is a copyleft license.

A Linux distro is far from being limited to the kernel so your reference to Microsoft is kind of meaningless here.

They have only themselves to blame (as a whole, not individuals) because their platform is a pain to develop for compared to others unless your code is open source so distros can compile it themselves.

One does wonder whether this situation is intentionally exacerbated by the fundamentalists. Case in point, there are people against Flatpak because it makes it easier for developers to bypass repos and their package maintainers.

> there are people against Flatpak

Hello there. An not so much against it, as not "for it".

> it easier for developers to bypass repos and their package maintainers.

No, that's not the problem at all. The biggest problem is duplication of libraries, most of which will not see security updates nowhere near as promptly as the system version would, integration with the DE and the problems there, fundamentally replicating the Windows/macOS model, while many see native package management as superior for the reasons I mentioned.

Then I guess this is the trade-off you've agreed to. However, there are a whole lot of Linux and potential Linux users who complain about the lack of proprietary software ports, and package managers and their implications are one of the reasons for that.

Flatpak isn't even good enough, in my opinion, since it adds complexity to an otherwise simple scheme in an effort to accomplish some of the deduplication you and other fans of package managers want. Ditto its repo model.

I can personally be unenthusiastic about it, but that does not hinder your ability to adopt it, if you wish to do so. I just wanted to clear the perception that we're somehow trying to hinder devs or whatever.

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