Microsoft Has Run Roughshod Over The Entire Industry?

i think winblows should just quit and let linux be the one and only OS. or bring back geoworks which was a great OS. i never use internet explorer except to download updates for winblows

Mike, I couldn’t agree with you more. The technology world owes a debt of gratitude to Microsoft. I felt that way when the US government were doing their glorified witch hunt and still feel that way in the EU’s case. It’s short sighted and disgraceful.

This being the case…what about going after KDE as well. Konquorer is as much of the KDE shell as Internet Exploder is Windows shell. You can use either for surfing the Net or for file services. Plus…you can get Opera for Linux as well.

Obviously someone has been drinking the Microsoft Kool-Aid.
I’ve been with the microcomputer industry from the beginning and I remember quite well how Gates and Allen stole university computer time to make a commercial product (BASIC) for the Altair computer. Sure they gave money back to the university YEARS later. I remember quite well how Gates had the audacity to call us all pirates when he was selling $4 worth of papertape for $400. The early versions of the BASIC compiler he wanted to put a hose into your wallet for every application you wrote. How about that warning that used to pop up in Windows 3.1 if you were running DR-DOS instead of MS-DOS? It worked just fine, but hey, what’s a little FUD if it promotes your product? You mention how IBM failed to promote OS/2, but you seem to forget that IBM had Microsoft writing it at the same time they were writing Windows, obviously no conflict of interest there. If you were a developer in the 90’s you probably felt like you were on a treadmill because Microsoft kept changing their development tools, forcing you to spend lots of time reworking your code, just so you could stand in the same place, while Microsoft, knowing the changes, was always 6 months ahead of you. And those poor companies that went into partnership with Microsoft that found their products were only bought as a stopgap until Microsoft could develop their own and then make it difficult for applications that used those 3rd party features to function. Do you remember STAC? So when Netscape made a splash and Gates was caught with his pants down, they created IE, using Netscape as a model and found that model could almost replace the OS. When the antitrust folks came knocking, Microsoft took the functions that drove IE and sprinkled them through all the modules of the OS, just so they could claim, at that time, that IE could not be removed without destroying the operating system. Is this the version of Windows you are defending? Certainly now the concepts that drive a browser are integral to Windows, but don’t fool yourself that all of this was not possible without Microsoft. Many other companies created the technologies that Microsoft would “Embrace, Enhance, Extinguish” over the years. But I’m not totally down on Microsoft, I think it’s taken 20+ years, but they’re finally learning how to program, the dotNET has some clinkers, but it’s a vast improvement over their previous works. But I still think you need to have the prescription for your rose tinted glasses checked.

You comment:

“I don’t know how old you are or how far back you can remember, but if it were not for Microsoft, the industry would not be anywhere as advanced as it is today.”

Evidently I’m older than thee! And I remember why Msoft garnered support from all of us who were _very_ suspicious of IBM’s linking hardware and op system together. To control both - that would really suppress any meaningful competition.

So we all bought into young Bill Gates and the idea of building systems in garages (yes, that explains how Apple got away with bundling soft- and hardware).

Now, however, Msoft has the software market and does deals with hardware manufacturers that stall linux drivers, Apple compatibility, and alternative browser use.

Please note these deals really are in constraint of free market: they keep drivers from being marketed, not developed. You can’t be a Broadcom and rely on Msoft support and still market drivers for alternative op systems, can you?!

So we’ve gone full circle (for those of us who have been arouind long enough) and now Msoft has bundled software and “available” hardware. Just what we fought off IBM for, so long ago. So long ago that some forget…

Microsoft may have gotten most people into the Pc, including me but they have stifled oposition which they do not like.
Their methods have driven a lot of people including me to go to Linux, which is far better… very few hangups etc… and I am not having to pay through the nose for new O/s or software!
Europeans are somewhat anti Microsoft as they have to pay more for Vista etc than users in the US.
Viva Obama!
Geofrs

I don’t at all disagreed with your arguments. But I would have found them much easier to follow if you had checked your article for spelling and grammar before hitting the publish button. There are several places where I had to pause to work out what you meant. The worst instance being, “If Opera what’s a bigger piece of the pie”, which is simply illiterate.

Mike,

Your arguments are the best that I have heard yet for letting MS continue to operate as usual.

The accomplishments you speak of are however, past history. They do not justify in most people’s minds their continued monopoly-like dominance in the market. No more than Bell Laboratories technical breakthroughs allowed Ma Bell to stay as one company.

The end user marketplace is starting to wake up to the fact that there are viable alternatives to MS based products. I know for a fact that many financial institutions have converted to Linux, probably for security reasons.

If MS continues to behave the way it has in the past (i.e. Internet Explorer vs. Netscape) then sooner or later, whether you, I or anyone else agrees, MS will have to “pay the piper”.

My personal opinion is that they were already in violation of anti-trust laws with the IE/Netscape thing. They should have either been “broken up” or had to make the Windows kernel source code public, not let off the hook and allowed to hand out discount coupons.