people love to credit MS's success to their ruthless monopolistic practices and there is truth to that, but they've also (a) treated developers very well and (b

people love to credit MS's success to their ruthless monopolistic practices and there is truth to that, but they've also (a) treated developers very well and (b) put tremendous effort into backwards compatibility. Neither of these are trivial but I don't think there's another player out there who has done this as well.