The Commodification of the OS is Complete

Wikipedia:

Commodification occurs as a goods or services market loses differentiation across its supply base, often by the diffusion of the intellectual capital necessary to acquire or produce it efficiently. As such, goods that formerly carried premium margins for market participants have become commodities…

It would be interesting to try and figure out if anyone saw this coming 10 years ago. Today, Microsoft announced that Windows, the last holdout, would be distributed for free with the launch of Windows 10. Some smart people ☺ saw this coming a few years ago — but it had become pretty obvious at that point.

There had to be a Microsoft meeting in the 1990's when some “freak” spoke up at a meeting and said they should give Windows away for free. He or she likely became disenfranchised after this idea was shot down over and over again. I wonder where these people are today. What are they thinking right now? Who’s been pushing for this the longest and is still at the company — that’s a cool person.

How different would our world be if Windows went free in the 1990's? Certainly this would have been a blow to Linux which became the backbone of every Internet giant.

Personally I could care less about Windows. I've been OS X for the last decade and you couldn't pay me to use Windows. But that doesn’t matter. Whatever operating system you prefer, it’s now free! This is huge. I remember in college I couldn't afford Microsoft Office software and it was a real challenge. Today the Windows OS is free, the mobile Office apps are free and the web-based version of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are free. In retrospect, this is unbelievable.

Let’s recap the current situation.

Android = free
iOS = free
Chrome OS = free
Linux distros = free
OS X = free
Windows = free

Absolutely freaking amazing. How far we’ve come. I guess the Linux folks had it right the whole time!