I used to be interested in Windows NT, but the more I see it, the more it looks like traditional Windows with a stabler kernel. I don't find anything technically interesting there.

I don't think commercialization is the answer to anything. It's just one more facet of Linux, and not the deciding one by any means.

My name is Linus, and I am your God.

It just makes it even harder for people to even approach the (open source) side, when they then end up having to worry about public humiliation.

So I would not be surprised if the globbing libraries, for example, will do NFD-mangling in order to glob "correctly", so even programs ported from real Unix might end up getting pathnames subtly changed into NFD as part of some hot library-on-library action with UTF hackery inside.

Theory and practice sometimes clash. And when that happens, theory loses. Every single time.

With software, you really can replicate and do a lot of very real and active development in parallel, and actually try it out and see what works.