Re: Lack of innovation

 > Since programming for Linux is not about making money, what is
 > keeping Linux developers from innovate? Why do so many take the
 > easy road of cloning instead of creating some totally new concepts?

This is a place where a distinction must be made between KDE/Gnome
etc. and Linux. It may well be that KDE and Gnome applications try to
copy MS programs because that's what people seem to want. (And all the
Unixes use KDE and Gnome.)

Linux and the *BSDs are where new ideas actually get implemented, for
a very simple reason: if I'm a researcher with a whiz-bang idea, I can
only implement it on an OS that I have the source to, that I can hack
and modify to my heart's desire. I can't reel off a list off the top
of my head, but ping-pong buffers, softupdates, Beowulf etc. -- all on
free Unix systems. (When AT&T Unix source code was freely available to
universities, that was the chosen vehicle.)

Commercial vendors have a strong incentive to NOT innovate or work on
stability. Trying new things is risky. Spending resources on things
users can't immediately see is risky. Much safer to concentrate on
fancy colours and cool marketing. These are things that MS, Apple
etc. excel in. The only "innovation" MS has been doing is fixing UI
problems (and now they're being dragged into fixing security bugs) and
trying to tie users into MS-only systems. Apple's strength is its
"cool hip" marketing. All the features of those systems were invented
elsewhere and acquired, then polished up. (If I were a stockholder
that's what I'd want them to do.)

-s