| Technically you are correct, but from all the information I can see it seems
that more than half of all "devices" must be running Linux, so it is in the
majority, which makes it the dominant OS. By far the largest share of course
is Android, which is probably not what Linus was imagining, all those years ago.
The next phase of the battle should probably be to extend the dominance to the
desktop by making distros which have at least an app, but hopefully not the
entire GUI in my opinion at least, which allows users to work with it just like
an Android phone or tablet. Linux has one big advantage, above those that we
all know already. As there is no dominant player in the market, there can be no
possibility of anything that constitutes an illegal monopoly. Just because
independent suppliers use common ideas, and even the same freely available code,
to make similar products, the code does not become a monopoly, and I am fairly
sure that an idea can't be a monopoly either. IANAL, but common sense suggests
that when Linux is truly seen to be dominant, there can't be a sensible attack
on it via the anti-trust authorities. Once visibly dominant to the world at
large, there will be no compelling reason to change, until in the normal course
of such things another Linus arises with fresh ideas and makes a completely new
kernel, which will most likely be as a result of substantial and as yet
unforseen changes in fundamental hardware architecture. I would imagine at least
10 to 20 years of dominance. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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