Microsoft Windows is not on the list because it had direct descendent upgrades. 95 to 98 to XP etc provided a smooth upgrade experience for the end-user. Works

Microsoft Windows is not on the list because it had direct descendent upgrades. 95 to 98 to XP etc provided a smooth upgrade experience for the end-user. Works and Office were completely different product lines, and Works was free for the vast majority of its users, while Office was obviously not. It's not apples to apples. COBOL was not in Visual Studio for ~20 years. Someone in 1996 couldn't have just fired up Visual Studio for Cobol after it was deprecated back then.