I was absolutely in favour of MS being dismembered ten years ago because their monopoly wasn't a win for anyone. But that doesn't mean I don't think in hindsight that there wasn't a historical user benefit in a de facto standard, even if it was a broken one.

It's not a black and white issue. If you happen to be interested in the history of computing, not many issues are black and white.

Historically the point stands - whether or not developers enjoyed the experience, the fact is that over the last decade there's been far more useful desktop-level software of higher quality produced for Windows than for Linux.

There are complex reasons for this, and they go a little beyond 'Yay Microsoft!' But apparently it's not possible to make this point without being shouted down by angry people.

Fair enough.

But that's very much the negative user experience I was talking about. 'You're either with us or against us!' isn't usually a position that makes me feel positive about a project.

So this exchange and everyone's comments have proved the point - OS culture seems as sealed to outsiders as large corporations are. You're either in it, as a card carrying evangelist and paid up member, or you're outside it, as one of the evil hordes who want to see MS stamping its jackboot on the face of users forever.

At worst you're 'Just a user' who can't even use a compiler or file a bug report properly.

I don't know about anyone else, but that kind of polarisation doesn't seem like a good thing to me.

What happened to 'On the one hand... on the other hand'?