this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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In the tech biz, this has already happened. You're living in the aftermath of it.
The Open Source movement created a strong shared infrastructure for the modern tech industry, all derived from Free Software components like Linux, gcc, and Python.
Linux caught on. It took over huge swaths of the tech world in the late '90s and early 2000s; displacing not only Windows servers but also SGI, Solaris, and most of the rest of proprietary Unix.
Companies learned how to build proprietary systems on top of a common open-source core; contributing certain elements back to that core while developing other components privately.
This is what almost all modern datacenters are built out of. Most servers providing most well-known Internet services are running Linux.
In consumer devices, it's what Android, Chromebook, and Steam Deck are built out of. The modern Mac is a cousin: the Darwin core inherits from BSD. Your wifi router probably runs a Linux or BSD kernel.
You've seen the jokes about "the year of Linux on the desktop". Thing is, Linux on the desktop has been an easily available option for decades. The joke is that most people don't choose that option; they choose proprietary systems because that's slightly easier at first ... and then they normalize enduring all sorts of bullshit from those systems' proprietors. (I mean, seriously! Windows XP didn't run ads on your desktop, but today's Windows does. Why? Because they know you'll put up with it.)
Point well made. I'm actually a bit embarrassed because I'm a programmer myself and should know this kind of stuff :D