> By it's nature, the Open Source (OS) community doesn't have the man-hours or leadership structure in place to make a coordinated desktop system.
More precisely, man-hours that can be directed by leadership at a specific goal. FOSS is great at creating things that programmers want, like text editors, terminals, and web frameworks, because programmers will do those things for themselves. It's pretty bad at creating things that non-programmers want, like WYSIWYG text editors, spreadsheets, desktops, and web browsers, because programmers will only do those things for money, and there isn't enough money in FOSS.
> Further to this, I believe a commercial structure in conjunction with an open-source component/ecosystem has a much greater chance for success, by it's nature.
For all its other faults, Apple got this right with Mac OS X: Apple pays people to write a coherent desktop system, but it's still Unix under the hood for people who use and develop FOSS. Android and Google Play have sort of done this for phones. I think there is a market for someone to make a paid, non-FOSS desktop based on Linux, since there are plenty of coders who don't want to hack on hairy desktop stuff.
"WYSIWYG text editors, spreadsheets, desktops, and web browsers" are all more than serviceable in Linux. I seldom find Firefox less useful on Linux than any other platform. For the rest the problem is that they are moving targets whose spec is dictated by others.
You want Excel to act like Excel and you also want Libre Office Calc to act like Excel, but Libre Office can never really be Excel, so it's Excel 97.
More precisely, man-hours that can be directed by leadership at a specific goal. FOSS is great at creating things that programmers want, like text editors, terminals, and web frameworks, because programmers will do those things for themselves. It's pretty bad at creating things that non-programmers want, like WYSIWYG text editors, spreadsheets, desktops, and web browsers, because programmers will only do those things for money, and there isn't enough money in FOSS.
> Further to this, I believe a commercial structure in conjunction with an open-source component/ecosystem has a much greater chance for success, by it's nature.
For all its other faults, Apple got this right with Mac OS X: Apple pays people to write a coherent desktop system, but it's still Unix under the hood for people who use and develop FOSS. Android and Google Play have sort of done this for phones. I think there is a market for someone to make a paid, non-FOSS desktop based on Linux, since there are plenty of coders who don't want to hack on hairy desktop stuff.