I'm a BSD fan myself, but startups are possible without open source. Stack Overflow runs on Windows, for example.
The one thing that startups need is freedom to make what people want so that those people will freely choose to pay the startup (how many startups existed in the USSR in 1970?). OSS is just a nice-to-have once you look at it that way. If it was a necessity, you'd have to explain how there were startups before anything was open source.
Edit: OSS would still exist in some form even if there were no government funding for it. You know how some people say they do it just for fun? I think that's true.
Also, another thing. Linux/BSD push the bar way high up and force Windows to try and catch up. So even if you use windows, you're still affected by Linux. In the same way that you're affected (positively) by Apple even if you use Ubuntu.
Minor rhetorical note - you used the phrase "exception that proves the rule" incorrectly. You used it to mean "the single exception to a general rule", with "open source software is necessary for a successful startup" being the rule, and Stack Overflow being the exception.
The phrase actually means that the existence of a specific rule implies that the negation is true for circumstances not covered by the rule. So, if half of the blocks in a city have "parking prohibited" signs, and no such signs elsewhere, that "proves" that parking is in fact allowed on the other blocks, since the signs are excepting the general rule. In other words, why would there be a sign if it was understood that there is no parking?
Sorry to make such a big point out of a small matter, but we already lost one good phrase ("Begging the question") to widespread improper usage. Wikipedia has more info, including the origin of the phrase: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule
The point is that the phrase "exception that proves the rule" should only be used when talking about man-made rules and laws, not inductive hypotheses. You don't get to use evidence against your hypothesis as evidence for your hypothesis!
Put another way, when used correctly, "the exception that proves the rule" is a valid rhetorical phrase regardless of how many exceptions there are. Whereas if there were 500 successful startups using non-open-source tools, you wouldn't say that they were the exceptions that proved the rule.
> You don't get to use evidence against your hypothesis as evidence for your hypothesis!
But you do. That's the point. It's not an absolute law. I'm sure you can find a great application written in Visual Basic. This doesn't make Visual Basic a great choice over Python.
If you could list 50+ successful startups running on Windows, then you could say there's a strong evidence.
And even then, this only proves that Windows is as good as Linux. It doesn't counter the original point about Linux being great despite not having a business model centered around IP.
I completely agree with your overall point - that open source Unix-type tools are better for startups, and that Windows-based tools aren't a good fit. I was simply saying that you used a rhetorical phrase incorrectly.
The operating system is just one component. People had lives and did things before there were operating systems of any kind.
Edit: For example, could you write CAD software without an OS as we know it today? It would be undoubtedly harder, but you could. People did this in the 60s.
It might be easier to write CAD software without an OS. At least, writing directly to a framebuffer is simpler than using X11 or OpenGL or Win32. Unless I'm missing something, a modern CAD system has to plot each entity twice; once to the display system and once to an internal grid. The internal grid is used for entity selection, possibly culling and other things.
The older AutoCADs (on DOS) apparently plotted the internal grid (hi-res), then resampled it to generate the screen display.
Thus, minor panning and zooming could be accomodated without "regenerating" -- replotting the hi-res grid.
Anyway, a CAD system doesn't really use the facilities of an OS; something like a web server, however, seems to benefit from an OS.
That depends on exactly what you mean by that. The funding sources are quite diverse. Most often, they start out with no funding at all and then, once they solve problems of interest to enough people, they start to attract both government and private sponsors.
But yes, there are government grants. Here's the first example I could find, one for developing a secure Linux desktop:
