"You are complaining about something that would cost huge amounts of money to develop not existing for free..."
I was not implying that such a project be started at this late juncture as clearly what you said would be correct if it did.
Perhaps it's best to illustrate what I meant with an example (there are of course many variations on this theme). Had the seemingly dead-in-the-water project ReactOS had at its outset decades ago in 1996 charged a small sum of say $10 to $20 for its Windows-like compatible operating system sufficient to cover costs then by now we'd have a viable clone of Windows that Windows users would be very familiar with and actually use.
Right, in the broad sense Linux is also an alterative to Windows but even with Wine installed it's still a very difficult call for many Windows users - the proof thereof is in Linux's take up numbers - even after decades, Windows users haven't moved to it in sufficient numbers to bother speaking about.
If the ReactOS project had paid its developers a living wage from the outset then it's hard to believe that by now - over a quarter century on - that ReactOS wouldn't be a viable alterative to MS Windows.
Given the longstanding and continuing angst many users have with both Windows and Microsoft's profiteering monopoly, it stands to reason they would readily jump to a viable alterative if it were available, especially so if its price was cheap in comparison to Windows. Similarly, there'd be precious little difficulty in getting large numbers of talented developers - and many developers means a quick finish to the project (er well, at least a much quicker finish than the current haphazard arrangement has produced, as the project stands now it could be strongly argued that it's not much further ahead than when it first started).
Perhaps this is a bad example due to possible controversy but I think not, specifically because there are many, many users who are disgruntled with both Windows and MS. Furthermore, as much of ReactOS's development has taken place in Russia, I doubt that any potential cries of plagiarism and or of copyright breaches from Microsoft would hold water, as we're all tragically witnessing, Russia isn't too enamored with the US or helping its corperations not to mention the way it's protected Snowdon. Any objections from Microsoft would be further weakened if the project were to demonstrate openly that it enforced clean room code development.
There's a lot more I could mention about this matter but I'll leave it here for the moment.
I was not implying that such a project be started at this late juncture as clearly what you said would be correct if it did.
Perhaps it's best to illustrate what I meant with an example (there are of course many variations on this theme). Had the seemingly dead-in-the-water project ReactOS had at its outset decades ago in 1996 charged a small sum of say $10 to $20 for its Windows-like compatible operating system sufficient to cover costs then by now we'd have a viable clone of Windows that Windows users would be very familiar with and actually use.
Right, in the broad sense Linux is also an alterative to Windows but even with Wine installed it's still a very difficult call for many Windows users - the proof thereof is in Linux's take up numbers - even after decades, Windows users haven't moved to it in sufficient numbers to bother speaking about.
If the ReactOS project had paid its developers a living wage from the outset then it's hard to believe that by now - over a quarter century on - that ReactOS wouldn't be a viable alterative to MS Windows.
Given the longstanding and continuing angst many users have with both Windows and Microsoft's profiteering monopoly, it stands to reason they would readily jump to a viable alterative if it were available, especially so if its price was cheap in comparison to Windows. Similarly, there'd be precious little difficulty in getting large numbers of talented developers - and many developers means a quick finish to the project (er well, at least a much quicker finish than the current haphazard arrangement has produced, as the project stands now it could be strongly argued that it's not much further ahead than when it first started).
Perhaps this is a bad example due to possible controversy but I think not, specifically because there are many, many users who are disgruntled with both Windows and MS. Furthermore, as much of ReactOS's development has taken place in Russia, I doubt that any potential cries of plagiarism and or of copyright breaches from Microsoft would hold water, as we're all tragically witnessing, Russia isn't too enamored with the US or helping its corperations not to mention the way it's protected Snowdon. Any objections from Microsoft would be further weakened if the project were to demonstrate openly that it enforced clean room code development.
There's a lot more I could mention about this matter but I'll leave it here for the moment.