So don't be self-contained. I mean, you depend on an X server or Wayland, right? So why not depend on GTK or Qt being available?
(Of course, it _is_ tricky to be able to depend on any of several versions of these, but still.)
On Linux that doesn't happen. First of all you HAVE to ship the source code if you want it to keep working on every machine because people need to compile it on their machine for it to work, so you're practically forced to open source your desktop app. I know the notion of having a closed source app on Linux sounds weird, but it's more weird that this isn't an option as a side-effect of the how the whole system is designed. Second of all, even if you do ship the source code, you're going to be forced to maintain it. If you made an app in GTK 1 (which looks beautiful, by the way, compared to modern GTK), people won't be able to just install it because GTK 1 is so old that it's no longer in the repositories.
An app made in Java 8 runs in the modern VM. An app made for Windows 95 still runs on modern Windows.
It's only on Linux that I feel like the developer is pressured to open source it and make it the user's problem because the system won't provide support.
Binary compatibility means closed source has a chance to grow in an ecosystem. It requires "responsible" developers to put more effort into designing APIs and keeping them alive. It adds complexity that requires a more stable set of long-term developers; in contrast, the constant churn in FOSS requires lower barriers for contributions. With stable APIs/ABIs you have to live with decade-long mistakes. You cannot "just fix it" in a next major bump.
You mean openssl? That said, if we can have /dev/tcp, why we can't have /dev/ssl?
That's so very not true.
Most Linux distros allows for custom repositories. So you can just setup the build infrastructure on your side and then have the users include your repos on their side. No need to open source code and users have painless update notifications.
> It's only on Linux that I feel like the developer is pressured to open source it and make it the user's problem because the system won't provide support.
Lots of users have never seen the source code of their software, they just get the binary package. The pressure you're talking about is imaginary.
WINE is often somewhat jokingly called a more stable platform for Windows programs than Windows is but there's truth there.
