alt Hacker NewsI think it is like most software, especially in the OS space. The technology doesn't have to be the best, it just needs to get lucky enough to become a standard and build a moat with that.
And by the mid 80's the moats were already very deep.
Amiga couldn't over come the PC. IBM couldn't over come the moat of Windows with OS2. Intel couldn't overcome x86 with the i432 or Itanium. Luck and market forces from said luck played a huge part in determining who won.
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> Amiga couldn't over come the PC.
For reasons that had nothing to do with OS. Swap Steve Jobs with Irving Gould and Apple would be dead in under a decade too.
I don't know Amiga well, but IBM's OS/2 efforts were plagued by several Big Blue Blunders. And both the i432 and Itanium were sounded-great ideas - for which Intel could not ship even expensive and mediocre-performance hardware in any reasonable time.
apparently China decision to ban US tech company and build their own counterpart is seen as Genius after 20 years
Is it luck or bold product and marketing decision?
Being first could be luck, or it can be foresight.
> it just needs to get lucky enough to
To not compete with something from a country which sees its interests threatened and has the power to squeeze you dry.
The US intervention to apply pressure handed a weapon to an internal player, Masayoshi Son who just happened to make money selling US software. He used that weapon against his and US' competition. It's a playbook that the US used again and again when it saw its interests threatened by competition: hit the enemy hard below the belt while handing weapons to another internal player who will also hit the enemy below the belt.
Every other example you gave came from inside the US, even from the same company with multiple products. The market played the defining role there and pushed for survival of the fittest. In TRON's case "market forces" turned out to be US intervention.
> The technology doesn't have to be the best, it just needs to get lucky enough to become a standard and build a moat with that.
I don't know about that.
Top 500 supercomputers running Linux. I use both Linux and Win10, for instance (won't switch to Win11 no matter what), but whenever I have to use Windows, I wonder how this garbage could ever become so dominating in the first place. Inefficiency is very clearly a work culture at Microsoft; I notice this every time I copy data. And then wingers for Windows babble about how Microsoft does so much more behind the scenes - all of which is totally pointless. It is such an utter trash operating system, so I can not agree with "it it is ok to suck" statements. I much prefer solid engineering at all times.
> The report stated that the US had concerns about Japanese government market intervention to support the TRON OS and identified two specific markets where TRON was receiving government advantage.
The US government is one hell of a moat.