Comment by tonyedgecombe 2 months ago
I'm not sure that follows. Prior to Android we had numerous options, since Android we have two. Prior to Linux we had Solaris, Next, Xenix, HP UX, AIX, BSD, etc. Now we have macOS and Linux. Browse through early issues of Byte or Dr Dobbs and see how many C/C++ compilers were available, now we have gcc or clang.
Android didn't win by being open source, it won by having Google backing it. In fact, that it is theoretically open source mattes neither to (most) phone manufacturers nor consumers (good luck actually making use of your software freedoms without being blocked by your bank).
Isn't a common newbie complaint about Linux that there are too many distros? So it really depends on how you want to count things. And BSDs still exists. So does Haiku and a few other niche operating systems.
Having many C/C++ compilers doesn't mean a thing if almost all of them are specific to one platform you don't use and half of those you can't afford anyway. And all of them have their own weird quirks.
Just counting number of competitors means nothing. That decreases in all industries over time, especially when there is little to no antitrust enforcement.
Put that way I almost think that open source made things worse. Without it we might have multitude of different computing paradigms. Now we are in essence stuck with two and one of those have enabled the other... And I have no doubt that with enough competition we could do lot better. After all lot of Posix is ancient crap not fit for current age.