I can understand from a moral/business perspective that drastic changes should be avoided in new releases but how is that an abuse of monopolistic power?
Would you call Ubuntu's decision to suddenly switch all the window controls (Minimize, Maximize, Close) from left to right in one version an abuse of their "monopoly" in the Linux desktop world?
The majority of users don't live in a Ubuntu world, they have to deal with Microsoft at their job or school. Corporations are demanding Windows 7 over Windows 8.
And Linux users have a full spectrum of distributions to choose from. If Ubuntu acts like an ass-hat, I can easily switch to Mint when the LTS version is no longer supported. I have a choice of desktops environments that all run the same services and applications. I'm not locked in, nor is my data. Squeeeeeee!
People bought laptops and the laptops weren't what they were expecting. There's a lot they could have done in the abstract. There's a lot less they were capable of doing in reality.