> "it was never forced on anybody" Depends on what you mean by "forced", right? If a PC manufacturer's choice is between not selling PCs with Windows pre-insta

> "it was never forced on anybody" Depends on what you mean by "forced", right? If a PC manufacturer's choice is between not selling PCs with Windows pre-installed and having to pay a per-PC license for Windows whether Windows is installed or not, then effectively it's forced. And this was likely in play for years, but covered by commercial in confidence. > DR screwed up massively by refusing to sign a deal with IBM Sure but that's a different issue entirely. As a result of the litigation over 86-DOS/QDOS (which MS licensed from Seattle Computer Products) Seattle Computer Products, DR-DOS, IBM, and Microsoft ended up with the right to ship DOS. Microsoft acquired SCP's license for chump change via a dubious legal maneuver whereby it was forced to sell its license to MS rather than to anyone else for whatever they wanted to pay (I forget the detail, it's documented in one of the Gates biographies). DR and IBM continued to sell technically superior versions of DOS, but IBM's was bundled with IBM-branded hardware and DR was crippled by Microsoft's licensing contracts which became particularly effective once Windows 3.x came out. > 21+ years is a bit of long time to hold a grudge This is only the tip of the iceberg of things MS's anti-competitive behaviors. Probably its most pernicious behavior was "dumping" on rivals (cross-subsidizing products such as Access until rivals went out of business) and actively sabotaging third party software (e.g. -- allegedly -- deliberately breaking Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS 2.x and -- well-documented -- breaking Borland compilers in the Windows 95 betas (which might well have continued into the release version had it not been caught red-handed).