Most servers around the world run Linux. The same goes for almost all supercomputers. That’s astonishing in a capitalist world where absolutely everything is commodified. Why can’t these big tech companies manage to sell their own software to server operators or supercomputers? Why is an open, free project that is free for users so superior here?
But that raises the question: why can’t tech companies, with all their billions, manage to produce software that is at least on a par with Linux?
Linux is made by tens of thousands of experts who care about what they’re making. No amount of money could hire that amount of expertise, herd that many cats, or elicit that much passion.
Those companies are the ones paying for Linux development. Thirty plus years of companies developing and improving Linux. Most have their own Linux OS. IBM owns 30% of RedHat. Linux hasn’t been a hobbyist OS since the early nineties.
They could, if they wanted to. This is somewhat an example of “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it”.
A lot of that is the fact that Linux is run incredibly lean. Replicating that isn’t cheap. They absolutely can, but since Linux is free and they can even modify it to suit their needs, its far simpler to do that.
Android is the best example. Google wanted a phone OS, so they bought Android Inc, who was making one. They could’ve spun up their own with their own talent, hired more, etc, but just absorbed one instead. That talent was making a phone OS based on Linux, because, again, they could’ve delved into the details of OS creation, but it was far easier to take a free OS, change the bits you want changed (like adding touchscreen support, which to my knowledge, wasn’t in the Linux version Android started with), and run with the new version you’ve made.
It’s also worth pointing out that Google has spent a lot of money on Android, and other large companies spend a lot on developing their own custom Linux Distro. It’s not like they have one software engineer for Android who downloaded Linux once and changed it. These companies are willing to do what you describe, they just didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. The Linux kernel, thanks to the community behind it, is incredibly secure and efficient, and there just wasn’t any reason to change it or copy it when it exists and is free to use.
They could but why, Linux is free. If companies pay an enterprise fee it’s to have a support contract to be able to escalate critical bugs but it’s not necessary.
Those companies have incentives to maximize profit, not maximize efficiency. In particular Microsoft has relentlessly given developers the opposite of what they want because its more profitable to some decision maker within Microsoft. Its enshitification.
Both Microsoft and Amazon have their own flavor of Linux now, but that’s really only for use in AWS and azure - and no one really uses either much yet
Because the decision makers at the top aren’t targeting long term goals of a good quality product and instead are focused on short term goals of increasing profit.