Lack of Accountability
As people have discussed here, there are many, many issues involved in making Linux a viable consumer OS. The largest obstacle to solving these problems is simply this: There is no single person or team of persons ultimately responsible for coordinating and integrating the solutions, and polishing Linux into a consumer-grade operating system platform. Open source is a ragtag collection of volunteer developers and geek heads, and together they've accomplished all sorts of technical wonders. It's also, by design, a competitive ecosystem that leads to hundreds of distros and software branches. But it is the very democratic (or pseudo-democratic) nature of the open source community that prevents Linux from making the jump from a utilitarian, engineering tool to a commercial, consumer-level product. Consumers expect, and demand, that their computers be as easy to use and problem-free as a toaster, television, or automobile. Open source doesn't have the genes to make this happen. There must be a controlling decision maker or leader, and there probably will never be one, because of the inevitable infighting that will ensue. Democracy sucks.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
