Positions forming in the Debian init system discussion

Well, Red Hat (who don't care about desktop: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/red-hat-opts-for...) and Canonical (who think they already won: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1) both agree with you, in a way. Which is probably the reason why there is no winner.

I am trying to imagine Google having the same attitude when it comes to Android/Chrome OS and it honestly does not compute. I really would not be surprised if Google ate Red Hat's and Canonical's cake in this space, although both of these had a massive first mover advantage (at different times).

If something like that were to happen, most of the projects that exist now in the "Linux desktop" space may simply become irrelevant.

Indeed!

My guess is that a lot of people have been conditioned to think in terms of "market" and "getting a piece of the cake" and so on and forget that not everything is gouverned by captialism, greed and the longing for more and more profit.

Actually even in the context of commerce, percentage in an arbitrary but unrelated context is often less relevant than other values.
Just consider the miniscule market share Ferrari has in the global car industry yet they continue to create cars that will never have any significant market percentage wise.

Or software created for a specific country or region, e.g. tax software. Those vendors often have a couple of thousand (or depending on country tens of thousands) customers, a tiny speckle in the global consumer software market, yet still considered very successful.

> No, of course not.

Mostly because the question was very clumsly phrased. It is not about "merging" at all, consolidation is more often about switching to a shared or third party solution for something in the next generation of ones products.

As a user, I'd expect them to interoperate.

> You are using the original definition for Linux and expect to get the same as with the modern definition. You can't. If you want to compare software at the same level, you have to take Gnome/Linux, KDE/Linux, Unity/Linux and whatever else there is.

Yeah, it reminds me of the good old joke the describes the Linux desktop situation pretty succinctly:

> I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! don't do it!"
>"Why shouldn't I?" he said.
> I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!"
> He said, "Like what?"
> I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?"
> He said, "Religious."
> I said, "Me too! Are you christian or buddhist?"
> He said, "Christian."
> I said, "Me too! Are you catholic or protestant?"
> He said, "Protestant."
> I said, "Me too! Are you episcopalian or baptist?"
> He said, "Baptist!"
> I said,"Wow! Me too! Are you baptist church of god or baptist church of the lord?"
> He said, "Baptist church of god!"
> I said, "Me too! Are you original baptist church of god, or are you reformed baptist church of god?"
> He said,"Reformed Baptist church of god!"
> I said, "Me too! Are you reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1879, or reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915?"
> He said, "Reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915!"
> I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off.

That's the essential complaint, that all of these silos are fundamentally working at cross purposes of each other because the fragmentation of the Linux Desktop OS marketplace weakens them all. A single arrow is weak and easy to break, a bundle of arrows is stronger and hard to break.