When it comes to platforms[0], you need to be able to depend on certain things being there and working a certain way. Fragmentation of a platform is bad, and Linux Desktop is so fragmented the various distros style themselves as entirely different OSs!
[0] As opposed to applications. Part of the problem is that historically there has never been a clear delineation in Linux Desktop.
This is the point I'm making though. There is fragmentation on the desktop (even if we just stick to window managers, display managers, desktop environments). But there's fragmentation EVERYWHERE. I can choose from thousands of distros, in numerous package formats, with different opinions on that collection of software and its default configuration.
Linux Desktop is fragmented but no worse, IMHO, than elsewhere. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but some people do like the choice otherwise those other choices wouldn't exist.
Android is also a prime example of the same thing.
If you compare Linux Desktop to other desktop operating systems it is catastrophically fragmented by comparison.
> Android is also a prime example of the same thing.
No, it really isn't, because I only have one package format that I have to package Android applications in and the only API I have to deal with is the Android API. Though of course that's a headache because of how new permissions and older APIs interact, but that's still a lot more straight-forward.
No snark intended, but how much did you pay for the software?
The point of the statement wasn't to badmouth developers for not making a Linux binary, it was to criticize the state of application deployment on Linux being so terrible that a developer didn't want to bother making a binary for it. That's true regardless of the cost of the software. Linux Desktop doesn't get to be all "please use me, I'm great!" and "well, what do you want for free?" at the same time.
