Excusing bad programming is a shooting offence, no matter what the circumstances.

I don't actually follow other operating systems much. I don't compete - I just worry about making Linux better than itself, not others.

In real open source, you have the right to control your own destiny.

Those that can, do. Those that can't, complain.

In many cases the user interface to a program is the most important part for a commercial company: whether the programs works correctly or not seems to be secondary.

I can't say that I like MicroSoft: I think they make rather bad operating systems - Windows NT is just more of the same - but while I dislike their operating systems and abhor their tactics in the marketplace I at the same time don't really care all that much about them.

If you want an application to be portable, you don't necessarily create an abstraction layer like a microkernel so much as you program intelligently.