I don’t think that’s how benefiting users works. Simply removing the options people have historically found suited them better doesn’t by itself create a better world.

There’s nothing whatsoever preventing the FOSS community coming up with better solutions, if they are capable of doing so, and taking away their main competitors doesn’t seem like a good way to incentivise competitive improvement. In fact we’ve been told repeatedly and often by FOSS advocates that open will inevitably beat closed anyway.

On the back end yes this has come to pass, but mainly because big corporations like AT&T, Intel and IBM have invested hundreds of millions, probably billions in Linux. Microsoft and Apple have also invested hundreds of millions, probably billions at this point, in their desktop platforms. The independent hacker community just can’t come close to that level of disciplined, organised, focused investment of effort.

Linux on ARM is another case in point. It takes a big company with huge resources like Google to get it done in a coherent, usable way.

We need to stop thinking about companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft as obstacles. They aren’t stopping the FOSS community from doing anything. They’re just bringing their own contributions to the table. Take Apple out of the picture and OSX, iOS and M1 Macs wouldn’t exist and FOSS would be exactly where it is now anyway.