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From NordicHardware (and linked elsewhere) comes this little tidbit about Mozilla developers possibly extending their work to create a Mozilla Desktop Environment, akin to KDE and GNOME, based on XUL.

I am personally all for new technologies and software. I know many people are against fragmentation in Linux and developers creating many different solutions for the same exact problem. I personally feel the more choices available, the better things are for everyone. Everyone doesn’t have to use the same stuff. People can use what they like best, and since everyone has different tastes, Linux allows them to pick the desktop or distribution they like the best. Microsoft, on the other hand, doesn’t give users a lot of choice. Some people credit this as to why Windows has become so successful, but we all know that isn’t the case.

Developers like a single stable platform to program for but this as well has greatly improved on Linux in the past decade. All modern distributions include libraries for all the popular development platforms standard. And with today’s package managers simply requesting a package to be installed ensures all its dependencies are met. Besides I think the number of choices available to Linux users has only helped increase the amount of developers available for the platform. I feel like we have way more choices available to us Linux users for various different applications than Windows users do. Commercial developers are only hurting themselves by not providing Linux ports of their applications. As the Linux user-base continues to expand, more and more viable alternatives for popular Windows-only applications will continue to be developed. If commercial software makers get in on Linux sooner rather than later they will have a much better opportunity for their software to make inroads before the open source community develops a much better free open source alternative.

Already we have seen a number of free open source applications that compete strongly against and even rival their commercial counterparts. OpenOffice.org, while it arguably still has a ways to go in taking over Microsoft Office, has comes a long way and will only continue to get better. Other applications like Amarok and K3b are very impressive applications that rival many proprietary competitors in the Windows-world. Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are excellent as well and are not only prominent on Linux but Windows (and Mac!) as well. Evolution is continuing to improve and provide Linux users with all the features Outlook (er Lookout!) users on Windows have come to expect.

On the 3D desktop front, Linux is already moving far past Windows Vista and Mac OS X (though it remains to be seen exactly what Apple has in store for Leopard). Even here we have multiple different options for 3D desktop implementations. The competition between them, as well as between the proprietary OS’s, has only helped strengthen them to where they are today. Each has talented developers that might not have gotten involved with the other project had they not had the choice of either starting their own or working on the one they chose.

There are other examples. The point I am making is the fragmentation is good, in my opinion. Having a lot of choice is a good thing. There are strong arguments that too much choice is a bad thing, but I feel that’s not the case. Bad projects will not survive. Often the people who developed them wouldn’t have gotten involved with a pre-existing project since they wanted to do their own thing to begin with. And in the end if no one else benefits from their efforts, at least they themselves have expanded their knowledge. Perhaps in the future they will create another project that will be successful and revolutionary based on the knowledge and experiences gained from working on the failed project.

So I’m looking forward to trying out a Mozilla Desktop Environment, and even a Mozilla OS, if they do produce one. I may not decide it is the best one for me, but the creative minds behind it will no doubt sway others to it. Who knows, they could end up making something we all will want to use, or give ideas to the other desktop environments resulting in better features and functionality everywhere. Or it could suck and on one will use it.

This is what open source is about. Linux will never be like Microsoft. It will not gain market share through shady business practices or forcing everyone to be the same. Linux will gain market share simply through giving people out there what they want. It’s all about choice.