4 ms·

I remember the agressiv commercial technics, the troll-like litigations and how easy it was to copy their software (no copy protection) compared to the concurre

I remember the agressiv commercial technics, the troll-like litigations and how easy it was to copy their software (no copy protection) compared to the concurrents. Before microsoft, software was expensive. Many people were programming their own games or software with the language of their computer (a mix of proprietary basic and assembly). After, everybody had pirated copies of Win3.1 and Office and were coding excel macros :-( For me, there was an explosion of creativity between 1983 and 1992 where people were empowered to program. After, programming was for "specialists". I have hated a lot Microsoft at that time.

mikestew 9y ago
how easy it was to copy their software (no copy protection) compared to the concurrents. That's an important point that I forgot about until you mentioned it: I bought Microsoft software because it was easy to copy, or more accurately, lacked copy protection. This was in the days of having to shove the original disk in the drive even if you had it copied to the hard drive. It'd be one thing if floppies were more reliable, but $DEITY help you if that master disk went bad, because Lotus would be...less than helpful. So I rewarded the "good guy" by buying their unprotected software. Hey, if they trust me enough to not copy-protect it, the least I can do is pay for a copy. And when Windows NT went out, I remember big debate about whether Microsoft could do enterprise software, given that all they'd really done to that point was put out applications and dev tools, and a cute little graphical shell that went on top of their cute little toy operating system.