Hey Everyone: Here's how Gates REALLY beat Lotus

[Jeffrey Fox <jf@pipeline.com>]

  In response to Charles Kelly's remarks below...Microsoft did NOT beat Lotus,
  WordPerfect, Borland, Etc. through superior products or stamina. In 1988,
  this misled all developers including those companies into believing MS was
  supporting IBM's new operating system, then known as OS/2-Presentation Manager.
  I personally saw Bill Gates speak at a NYC school in '88, at which meeting
  he promoted the value of the new OS.
  
  After they suckered their competitors into developing products for OS/2, MS
  split with IBM and developed their own, Windows 3.0. In 1990, when Windows 3.0
  was forced upon all hardware manufacturers as a condition of bundling MS-DOS
  (sound familiar, Netscape?), there was only one serious Windows word
  processer and one serious spreadsheet: MS Word and Ms Excel. You couldn't
  buy 1-2-3, WordPerfect, or DBASe for Windows.
  
  It was years before Lotus and WordPerfect were able to redirect their R&D,
  during which time Microsoft captured the market share they
  had never been able to capture in *FAIR* competition under MS-DOS. Only when
  they tricked their competitiors, and double-crossed their
  partner IBM, and threatened their hardware pals were they able to get the
  market share.
  
  Yes, Mr. Kelly, that's the sad truth. I was in the software indsutry back
  then and I know. (My company was called Fox & Geller).
  Perhaps others who remember that period will confirm my account.
  
  The following account by Mr. Kelly is pure BS:
  >
  >Microsoft has faced stiff competition in every niche of the computer
  industry. The list is long -- OS/2 was/is technically superior to
  Windows/Windows NT, WordPerfect was vastly superior to Word, Lotus 1-2-3 was
  vastly superior to Excel, dBase was huge before Access was even conceived,
  and on and on...