You’re right about the boards - it’s been a while but the main point was that this wasn’t just pure open competition for their biggest break. My focus on the l

You’re right about the boards - it’s been a while but the main point was that this wasn’t just pure open competition for their biggest break. My focus on the licensing was this part which your quote included: “Microsoft penalized OEMs that installed alternative operating systems by making their license terms less favorable”. The consent degree and other legal cases took a while to apply any effective counter pressure, and by that point Microsoft had managed to effectively starve competitors (DR-DOS, GEOS, BeOS, OS/2, etc.) of revenue which would have made the 80s and 90s marketplace more competitive. They knew that staying the default choice for businesses as long as possible meant that those companies would acquire a library of software and training which only worked for their operating systems, and successfully banked on a slow government response.