I think the famous phrase “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature” applies.

I’ve been using linux since the 90s. Over the decades, the distribution people generally use has changed, as well as the specific tools within each distribution.

If open source was a cathedral like closed source, the market dynamic would be gone. Nobody would have moved from redhat to mandrake, from mandrake to ubuntu, from ubuntu to the latest distributions. Nobody would move between different desktop environments or window managers. Nobody would choose between different APIs to select the best ones for them.

The thing is, that cathedral often leads to stagnation. Sure, there’s only one choice so it’s straightforward, but there’s only one choice so if they don’t do the things you want or try new things then you’re stuck with what they gave you. That’s the Internet Explorer 6 problem.