Nobody wants Linux to be more like windows, and otherwise they’d just use windows.
I do, and this is why FOSS cannot reach its political goals - it won't ensure user's freedom, for almost everyone involved today would rather chase their own satisfaction.
As for ensuring - how it is, that in 2025 AD we have more FOSS projects than ever, yet your typical computer user has less freedom and privacy than, let's say, in 2000 AD?
Why should my freedom to build my own distro that I choose to distribute for my reasons be squashed so some hypothetical "user" who might come along and have spoon-fed documentation?
Furthermore, the skillsets of writing good documentation and technical problem solving needed to build and roll out a distro are not 1-to-1.
For that matter, if political victory were to be achieved in the way you've suggested, it would be utterly Pyrrhic. The only way to achieve a unified singular FOSS operating system that nobody forks or otherwise competes with would be to strip users of their freedoms to do so. So that's not a victory at all for the political side of FOSS.
You might conclude then that FOSS victory is impossible. I think so too, and that's fine. It doesn't stop FOSS from being useful to me and many other people. Some people will never use it, and that's fine.
That they won't, I agree, for, as this thread shows, libertarian and individualist ideas are stronger in this demographics. I also agree that FOSS is useful even in its current state, but being useful is not a goal of free software. Freedom is a political notion.
And common people do not need to care that much about free software ideas to consider political goals of the movement to be fulfilled, the same way today's workers do not need to care about socialist theory to enjoy workers rights.
