As I said, it means that code would be written to Linux specifically. What works on linux, what is fast on linux, etc., would be what people write to.
So if someone invented a new kernel that is better than linux, it would have two problems: The usual problem of getting adoption and interest in a new project, but also the problem of all existing code being designed with linux in mind.
Whereas today, people generally try to write code that runs well not just on linux but also on other kernels. Not because they have lofty ideals necessarily, but because there are other kernels.
If we had only linux, that wouldn't be the case.
This is the basic question of standards. Open source is great - as I said above, I have been a huge supporter for a very long time - but standards are an orthogonal issue to open source, and just as important. Writing to standards instead of the bugs/idiosyncrasies of a single implementation is the only thing that makes it easy for new implementations to show up. And standards are dead when there is a single implementation.
So if someone invented a new kernel that is better than linux, it would have two problems: The usual problem of getting adoption and interest in a new project, but also the problem of all existing code being designed with linux in mind.
Whereas today, people generally try to write code that runs well not just on linux but also on other kernels. Not because they have lofty ideals necessarily, but because there are other kernels.
If we had only linux, that wouldn't be the case.
This is the basic question of standards. Open source is great - as I said above, I have been a huge supporter for a very long time - but standards are an orthogonal issue to open source, and just as important. Writing to standards instead of the bugs/idiosyncrasies of a single implementation is the only thing that makes it easy for new implementations to show up. And standards are dead when there is a single implementation.