A story on slashdot today had a bone-headed comment. Read on for my response.
Common misconception amongst everyone in the open source movement, or just anti-MS zealots in general. If Microsoft is focused on making money, they are focused on their products. They cannot, at gunpoint, force consumers to purchase their products. In order to make money, they must provide a product that appeals to the largest number of people possible. That is focusing on the product. While it may not be technically superior or as stable as other OS's (Linux, Mac OS X, name it), it still does what most people want while the other operating systems don't. That is why those OS's don't have the market share.
No, the reason that those OS's don't have market share is not because the operating system doesn't do what consumers want. The reason Windows has a huge market share is a combination of two factors:
Microsoft made computing mainstream
That's giving them way too much credit
and gives most consumers exactly what they want. Isn't that kind enough? They're a business, what else are they supposed to do?
Well, for starters: