Would linux have done well if it had originated as a pay licensed operating system
 

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What are you talking about? You've always been able to pay to use Linux. My own purchase history includes a large sampler box from Walnut Creek, the first version of Mandrake, and the last several years worth of Slackware.

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This is all pure speculation. The only history we know, or can know, is the true history that happened. Things are as they are. Speculation can be fun, and I sometimes speculate on what it would be like to travel back and forth in time. But I'm stuck in the here and now. I like free things, Linux being one of them.

LOL so true :D


Windows, people like because humans by creation are "lazy".
We are programed to relax and take it easy....

I speculate, the OP must have had a more specific question or example in mind.;)

Indeed.

Yet dugan answered the question succinctly correct. offgridguy's speculation is reasonable, and I wanted to add a little in speculation too.

Would linux have done well if it had originated as a pay licensed operating system?

The question begs the presumption that "had it been not free (as a beer) Gnu/Linux would have not fared this substantial domination in the 'server' usage and now going up in the 'desktop' popularity". But this presumption does not reflect the reality.

Rather, the straight speculative answer is to say that Gnu/Linux would still have done well if it had originated as a pay license OS. Why? because Gnu/Linux as an Operating System was and continued to be implemented along the unix-philosophy. To the contrary, in fact, unix was and is still now, in few cases, more expensive than microsoft operating systems talking of industrial and infrastructure servers. Yet, Gnu/Linux today, being implemented within the principles of unix philosophy, has become more scalable, stable, secure and easy to manage. Qualities that you are not fully satisfied if you run and manage any of the M$ systems be it server or desktop. In short: if I am forced by chance <Speculative again> to pay a Salix OS v.14.1 at a price more than $10 than that of Windows 10, I am still glad to choose and pay Salix OS a fast and stable Gnu/Linux Slackware derivative at $20 above the price of M$ W. 10.

The race of Gnu/Linux vs. Microsoft Desktop/Servers is not decided by the mere aspect of cost and money, but by quality.

Thank you for your time.

m.m.

And apparently answering the question has made the OP run away ... strange. Maybe he thought asking such a question would put him on some sort of watch list ... lol

As an alternate idea though ... would Windows have been such a success had it followed the same paradigm adopted by linux?

Nothing can be more felicitous riposte to his question grail. lol

I have had this image in my mind for a while now of new posters here climbing in to their rowing boat getting ready to cross the Atlantic, or putting on their gear ready for a trek to the source of the Amazon River, or similar, and thinking "Why don't I post that Linux question I have on LinuxQuestions just before I set off?" ;)

:D
They're probably half way up Everest by now...

You kids get off my lawn!