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Comment by dsign | Hacker News Reader

At this point, Windows's application binary interface is something of a common good, at the same level as roads and utilities. Shouldn't we have a piece of legislation that forces Microsoft to offer that binary interface in the same way as utilities sell power?

I love Linux, and I think that Linux desktop is fairly usable, but a bunch of software I rely on works much better on Windows.

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Here’s a fun fact that may interest you. There was an attempt in the 1990s outside of Microsoft to make the Windows API an official standard to help other operating systems run Windows software, but Microsoft balked, asserting its IP over the Windows API:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_Programming_Inte...

>Windows 3.1 API

I am always surprised to learn how big Microsoft was by the Windows 3.x era. Bill Gates was already the richest person in the world before the release of Windows 95.

Maybe it's because I am young and I assumed their total dominance emerged in the Windows 98 to XP era with only receiving some pushback with the emergence of Intel Macs in the late 2000s.

The Acquired Podcast has a great episode on the history of Microsoft. Well worth a listen for any one interested.

https://www.acquired.fm/

Can't say enough good things about this podcast!

Should be required listening in business schools and for anyone thinking of starting a company. Its amazing to hear about all these behomoth companies, how they were once startups themselves, how they often lost there way after success, how they changed and morphed through history!

Each time I listen to an episode about a company I think I won't be interested in I'm blown away.

While I don't regret my career decisions, one thing that always comes back is the thought: What if I had doubled down on the Windows API and C++.

I don't see many job openings for those types of jobs, but I would have had an incredibly stable platform for the past 25 years. If you wrote a service for Windows in the early 2000s, it seems like it wouldn't be that much work keeping it running today. I have seen examples of companies managing to lock their software to Windows Server 2008 by accident, so there is some room for failure, but that might very well just be incompetence.

>a bunch of software I rely on works much better on Windows.

So buy and use Windows.

Windows remains the king of desktop because everyone wants/needs Windows programs.

The monopoly Windows currently has allows them to create a user hostile environment.

The parent post is a pretty good indicator that not everyone wants windows.

Everyone wants Windows software, which unsurprisingly runs best on Windows.

Normal people don't care what OS they use, they care about using the software they want/need.

... Everyone doesn't...

There's plenty of heavy-hitters on Linux natively now, including DaVinci Resolve (Hollywood's #1 post tool), Bitwig, Studio One, Reaper et al. Even Unreal Engine. Blender perf is much better on Linux too.

Your head canon of software has yet to update to the latest commit.

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