Hacker News Reader

Comment by Herring | Hacker News Reader

I'll play devil's advocate for a sec. If some user doesn't care about freedom/price, why should anyone care about him using linux? Linux is free; I don't imagine a higher market share will increase profits much. Seems to me like shuttleworth's doesn't know who his customers are & I wonder how far he'll get running this as a charity.

View on HN

"If some user doesn't care about freedom/price, why should anyone care about him using linux?"

Network effects. The more Linux users there are, the greater the incentive for companies to support their hardware and software on Linux.

I see your point. I wonder, though, whether it's worth the trouble. We're doing really well for <1% market share or whatever it is. Much of the popular windows games/software runs on wine/cedega & I haven't had any trouble finding linux-compatible hardware. Maybe it was the case in 2001, but I don't think unsupported hardware/software is much of an obstacle today.

I don't think we've reached the point yet where you can buy a laptop or PC and not wonder about whether it can flawlessly run all your Linux apps, with all the finger print readers, weird mice and keyboards, webcams, etc, that now come with computers. That's the point I'd say Linux hardware support should aim for.

I don't think any more than that would be good. If it gets too mainstream, it won't be a geek OS anymore... We'll have to find something else :(. And the possible problem of people writing more viruses for it. (Though I'm not an expert on security issues)

This doesn't sound like a charity:

http://www.canonical.com/services

Actual profitability is, of course, another question.

Many of the people who contribute to Linux do so because they feel it's "the right thing" in some sense (though that can mean a lot of things). There's a lot to be said for network effects increasing the value of Linux for everyone, but for a lot of people it's simply that they get their gratification from feeling like they've helped build something that other people enjoy and find useful. If more people use and enjoy what you've built it's simply more rewarding to do the work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com