Actually, Android would probably thrive if it was unprofitable. It'd end up in the hands of the open source community, instead of a greedy corporation controlling it with secret contracts.

The open source community is terrible at UX, Android is the first usable mobile OS based on linux with a good UX and I'm typing this from my Ubuntu laptop. Second, Android is already available as open source and there are a few open source distro, they are not thriving. Finally, we're all greedy so let's not be judgmental here :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A

I think you are underestimating the amount of work that goes into producing a high quality mobile O/S.

Someone has to fund that effort.

And various interests building products based on Android will fund it or directly contribute. Note: Development on Linux happens.

Yes, and it's totally the year of the Linux desktop....not.

Look, I love Linux as much as the next guy - and I plodded along with Slackware, then Ubuntu, then Arch as my main machine for many years. Heck, I even used Gentoo as my main box for a while.

But let's be completely honest - Linux on the desktop compared to say OSX, or Windows, or even ChromeOS - doesn't even hold a candle, in terms of cohesive UX design, user experience, general polish etc.

So whilst the OSS community seems great at some things, UX design and the user experience for the non-technical user hasn't been one of them.

I think there's some great community-designed projects out there now (particularly in the web app space). Linux isn't one of them, obviously, but is that because it's open source or because design and consumer friendliness hasn't been a strong focus for the majority of it's contributors?

I would suggest Android is a much more consumer focused product, whereas Linux has been a much more IT focused product, and their development priorities reflect that.