[Am-info] Legal monopoly?

[John Poltorak]

On Tue, Apr 30, 2002 at 04:14:52PM -0500, Joe Barr wrote:
> 
> Microsoft was given the "Windows" monopoly when IBM went to it to
> provide the operating system for its new PC back in 81.  

That isn't the case.

You had to buy your own copy of DOS in the early days, and you did have 
the choice of DR-DOS among others at one point.

DR-DOS was a serious rival to MS-DOS in the late 80's.

> It became the
> Windows monopoly when MS stopped the sales of DOS and forced users to go
> to Windows.
> 
> So there were never illegal means used to gain the monopoly.  

What about the 'per processor' licence agreement?

DESQview provided an alternative to Windows for a while and only lost 
ground when people found they had already paid for Windows and didn't feel 
they wanted to buy a second DOS handler. 

> Lots of
> lots of illegal means to maintain it, though.
> 
> See ya,
> Joe Barr


-- 
John