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Gates Embraces Web Service Interoperability

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the lucy-won't-pull-the-football-away-this-time dept.

djh101010 writes "In a CNN article which looks more like something out of The Onion, Bill Gates expresses his interest in participating in interoperability with rival technologies, through common standards. Specifically mentioned are IBM's WebSphere, and Linux. 'We're being as inclusive as we can,' Gates said of Microsoft's role in the cross-platform project. 'This is a fabric for someone to do e-commerce that's independent of the operating systems that are out there.'

21 of 444 comments (clear)

  1. Well of course! by WheelDweller · · Score: 2, Informative

    Bill's doing this to get the skinny on the competing technologies...then he can invent something different about it, push it out the door in the next release, and it'll look, to the MS user, that MS is right, and all these other people are wrong. Remember Gates telling the ISO that he needed to change the work of 270 nations and make his codeset a little different? IE will show apostrophies....everything else shows question marks.

    Same stuff, different day.

    --
    --- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
  2. While it does look like they are "cooperating"... by thracky · · Score: 1, Informative

    It's quite hard to believe that after all the years of "royalty based" software as stated in the article that Microsoft is all of a sudden not claiming the rights to something that allows their product to be more compatible with rival products.

    Although it obviously was a collaboration, it's surprising to see that MS has not attempted to claim that they are now interoperable with other operating systems, instead of saying what they are now, being that the OS'es are now all more interoperable with each other. Does this mark a change in business tactics for Microsoft? Highly unlikely. I guarantee there's *some* sort of motive behind this move, they wouldn't do anything that would result in loss of business.

  3. This may actually be true by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Informative
    Microsoft is pouring money into my university (in exchange for a soul or two), and so we get to hear a few things about their plans. Like the fact that they have a *NIX version of ASP.NET under development (not the crippled version they released for FreeBSD). They realise that the server market is different from the desktop market, in that you get no buisness if you don't play nice with others.

    Do not make the mistake of thinking that this extends to the desktop though. They are quite happy for you to buy Visual Studio.NET, write ASP.NET web services and deploy on Linux, as long as the clients connecting to it are running Windows.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  4. Re:XML by molarmass192 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The namespace schemas are proprietary and redistribution is not permitted. No namespace schema, no way to make sense of what's in the XML.

    --

    Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
  5. Actions speak louder than words by TennesseeJeff · · Score: 2, Informative

    Isn't instant messaging a web service? And hasn't Microsoft already promised to cut off non-paying clients such as Gaim?

    Or does this mean that MS is going to open Messenger to other clients like Gaim?

    Let's see what happens October 15th.....

  6. Exactly by Carnage4Life · · Score: 5, Informative
    We all know how Gates "embraced" XML for Office 11...
    You mean how Microsoft shipped XML vocabularies compliant to the W3C XML 1.0 recommendation with schemas for the XML formats used by Word and Excel, stylesheets to convert WordML to HTML, and Office products like InfoPath that use over a dozen XML and Web standards in a compliant manner. Yeah, it is really cool how Microsoft embraced the XML family of technologies.

    Disclaimer: I work on the XML team at Microsoft but not directly with Microsoft Office.
    1. Re:Exactly by Chokolad · · Score: 2, Informative

      > Even if what you say is 100% accurate, and MS delivers a compatible format that works with say, OpenOffice and Start Office, you have absoultely _NO_ gurantees that MS will not change the file format on the next upgrade and at that point turn the data to a completely proprietary form that is accessible only to the next upgrade of office.

      There is no XML "standard" for Office documents. If you call OpenOffice XML format - standard, then Microsoft Office XML is standard is well. It is just a different standard.

    2. Re:Exactly by Vaughn+Anderson · · Score: 2, Informative
      There is no XML "standard" for Office documents.

      I didn't mention anything about a "standard", I said "compatible".

      If you call OpenOffice XML format - standard,

      No, I didn't.

      then Microsoft Office XML is standard is well. It is just a different standard.

      Most things MS creates use different standards, that is the problem. Microsoft's own Office programs can't even open their own files without it getting messed up, what is the point in trusting any new document designs they come up with?

    3. Re:Exactly by DickBreath · · Score: 4, Informative

      There is no XML "standard" for Office documents.

      KDE recently announced that KOffice would embrace the document formats of OpenOffice.org.

      This means that a Windows user running OpenOffice.org could save a document, send it to a KOffice user on Linux, and expect it to open.

      There is an effort to make a standard XML based office document format. Two office suites, so far, embrace it.

      Article in InfoWorld

      OASIS charter

      XML for the masses

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    4. Re:Exactly by itchy92 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Why is microsoft.com so damned hard to navigate, and why does the site search engine suck so much?
      While the question was not directed to me, I have worked for Microsoft in the past, and have actually asked this same question of my superiors.
      They said that for the amount of information they host on their page, with the diversity of content, it's actually set up in one of the most efficient manners. It may take a little while to find what you're looking for, but you will ultimately find it.
      And I've found this to be true.

      --
      Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff tha-- MICRO$OFT IS THE DEVIL!!1
    5. Re:Exactly by Vaughn+Anderson · · Score: 2, Informative
      Bullcrap. User Error. Nobody else has these problems with backwards compatibility.

      No one else has these problems?

    6. Re:Exactly by rifter · · Score: 2, Informative

      While the question was not directed to me, I have worked for Microsoft in the past, and have actually asked this same question of my superiors.

      They said that for the amount of information they host on their page, with the diversity of content, it's actually set up in one of the most efficient manners. It may take a little while to find what you're looking for, but you will ultimately find it.

      And I've found this to be true.

      Actually, with respect to getting bugfixes, support and product info microsoft.com is one of the best sites in the business. And it does have a lot of information about a dizzying array of products, so it makes sense they would have trouble organizing things.

      Man, I just said something good about microsoft. I can't believe I said that! Better say something bad, too...

      One thing I don't like about microsoft.com is that the new search is not as easy to narrow down as the old one. You used to be able to narrow a search by product right from the beginning, but now they force you to do a search on all products first. That kind of sucks and wastes my time.

      Also I do not like the tendency to making links that go nowhere and the forced obsolescence of old patches/software to the point of making it the software equivolent of an unperson. The fact Microsoft does not let anyone else keep old patches/ie versions that might be important for people running current products that just happen not to be the latest product exacerbates this but is not a criticism of microsoft.com per se.

      Ah, I feel much better now :).

    7. Re:Exactly by wastaz · · Score: 2, Informative

      You're a moron if you think that just because you never ran into a problem it doesn't exist. You must have gotten all viruses ever created too then, or perhaps they didn't exist either? Right. Bad thing to use as an example, but this is slashdot, I could just go "MS sucks! Stick with the program!" and get modded up to +5 Insightful.

      Instead I will tell you about my experiences.

      Sadly, my old school ran Office97 all the way through.

      Almost none of the students did.

      It was a known fact that if you would do anything at home, you'd better save it as pure txt or rtf, otherwise you would be unable to open it or have a very messed up document when you got to school the next day and tried to print it.

      XP and 2000, less problems. I admit that. There's still problems though, I've ran into them myself. It's all about what templates you use. As long as you stick to basics (text, bold, underline, italics, size and that kind of stuff) and dont try any fancy stuff like really cool table structures or great templates or math formulas, heck, even footnotes can kill it sometimes, then it works.

      But try to go a bit more advanced and you'll get hell just when you really really dont have time to fix the hell that the formats created for you.

  7. Re:Here is a sample of Word 2003 XML by SteveX · · Score: 4, Informative

    OpenOffice actually outputs four different XML files in a zip file when you save a document.. here's what they look like for comparison (for a default document with just the word Hello in it):

    content.xml:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE office:document-content PUBLIC "-//OpenOffice.org//DTD OfficeDocument 1.0//EN" "office.dtd"><office:document-content xmlns:office="http://openoffice.org/2000/office" xmlns:style="http://openoffice.org/2000/style" xmlns:text="http://openoffice.org/2000/text" xmlns:table="http://openoffice.org/2000/table" xmlns:draw="http://openoffice.org/2000/drawing" xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:number="http://openoffice.org/2000/datastyle " xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:chart="http://openoffice.org/2000/chart" xmlns:dr3d="http://openoffice.org/2000/dr3d" xmlns:math="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:form="http://openoffice.org/2000/form" xmlns:script="http://openoffice.org/2000/script" office:class="text" office:version="1.0"><office:script/><office:font- decls><style:font-decl style:name="Tahoma1" fo:font-family="Tahoma"/><style:font-decl style:name="Arial Unicode MS" fo:font-family="&apos;Arial Unicode MS&apos;" style:font-pitch="variable"/><style:font-dec l style:name="Tahoma" fo:font-family="Tahoma" style:font-pitch="variable"/><style:font-dec l style:name="Times New Roman" fo:font-family="&apos;Times New Roman&apos;" style:font-family-generic="roman" style:font-pitch="variable"/></office:font-decls>< office:automatic-styles/><office:body><text:sequen ce-decls><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Illustration"/><text:sequence-dec l text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Table"/><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Text"/><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Drawing"/></text:sequence-decls><text:p text:style-name="Standard">Hello.</text:p></office :body></office:document-content>

    meta.xml:

    < ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE office:document-meta PUBLIC "-//OpenOffice.org//DTD OfficeDocument 1.0//EN" "office.dtd"><office:document-meta xmlns:office="http://openoffice.org/2000/office" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:meta="http://openoffice.org/2000/meta" office:version="1.0"><office:meta><meta:generator> OpenOffice.org 1.1.0 (Win32)</meta:generator><!--645m18(Build:8687)-->< meta:creation-date>2003-09-18T11:55:07</meta:creat ion-date><dc:date>2003-09-18T11:56:33</dc:date><dc :language>en-US</dc:language><meta:editing-cycles> 3</meta:editing-cycles><meta:editing-duration>PT18 S</meta:editing-duration><meta:user-defin ed meta:name="Info 1"/><meta:user-defined meta:name="Info 2"/><meta:user-defined meta:name="Info 3"/><meta:user-defined meta:name="Info 4"/><meta:document-statistic meta:table-count="0" meta:image-count="0" meta:object-count="0" meta:page-count="1" meta:paragraph-count="1" meta:word-count="1" meta:character-count="6"/></office:meta></office:d ocument-meta>

    settings.xml I can't include because it has a UUEncoded section that Slashdot refuses..

    styles.xml:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE office:document-styles PUBLIC "-//OpenOffice.org//DTD OfficeDocument 1.0//EN" "office.dtd"><office:document-styles xmlns:office="http://openoffice.org/2000/office" xmlns:style="http://openoffi

  8. Re:Here is a sample of Word 2003 XML by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, I'm not joking. That's the code in "test.xml" sitting on my desktop.

    It must be Slashcode mangling it. I directly copied and pasted the resulting XML, and there is not single semicolon in the original. Also, Slashcode has sprinkled a few random spaces into the code.

    Not that it affects legibility any.

    --
    "Sufferin' succotash."
  9. Microsoft cannot be trusted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    How Microsoft embraces standards in general:

    > OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market.

    How Microsoft supports Office on the Mac:

    > Gates wrote, "Apple let us down on the browser by making Netscape the standard install." Gates then reported that he had already called Apple's CEO (who at the time was Gil Amelio) to ask "how we should announce the cancellation of Mac Office . . . ."

    > In Waldman's [Microsoft executive in charge of Mac Office] words:
    > "Sounds like we give them the HTML control for nothing except making IE the "standard browser for Apple?" I think they should be doing this anyway. Though the language of the agreement uses the word "encourage," I think that the spirit is that Apple should be using it everywhere and if they don't do it, then we can use Office as a club."

    How Microsoft supports multimedia standards:

    > Eric Engstrom, a Microsoft executive with responsibility for multimedia development, wrote to his superiors that one of Microsoft's goals was getting "Intel to stop helping Sun create Java Multimedia APIs, especially ones that run well (ie native implementations) on Windows." Engstrom proposed achieving this goal by offering Intel the following deal: Microsoft would incorporate into the Windows API set any multimedia interfaces that Intel agreed to not help Sun incorporate into the Java class libraries.

    How Microsoft embraced Java:

    > Microsoft's Executive Vice President, Paul Maritz, outlined Microsoft's strategy to win the browser war with Netscape and simultaneously "neutralize Java" by "tying" the "user interface" and "APIs" "back to Windows," by "get[ting] control of JAVA with JAVA support/tools", and by "get[ting] control of then leverag[ing] the programming model."

    > As reported to Bill Gates in April 1997 by the manager responsible for execution of Microsoft's strategy:
    "When I met with you last, you had a lot of pretty pointed questions about Java, so I want to make sure I understand your issues/concerns...
    > 1. What is our business model for Java?
    > 2. How do we wrest control of Java away from Sun?
    > 3. How do we turn Java into just the latest, best way to write Windows applications?"

    > "at this point its [sic] not good to create MORE noise around our win32 java classes. Instead we should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps."

    I could continue with quotes from the Caldera case, the Bristol Wind/U case, and so on.

    Time and again, Microsoft has claimed to support a technology or standard, and it turned out that they were lying, and it was just another fraud intended to trap developers and users.

    Microsoft has never been punished for their crimes of sabotage and fraud.

    It's the same people running the company.

    There is no reason to believe that this time will be different.

  10. Re:Here is a sample of Word 2003 XML by AstroDrabb · · Score: 2, Informative

    P.S. Nice try on the sig. Those are for APPLICATIONS not Linux you dolt. Here is my new sig

    31 Unpatched IE security holes
    Server attacks stump Microsoft
    Credit card theft feared in Windows flaw
    Microsoft issues patch for "serious" XP hole
    Windows flaw threatens PC services
    Microsoft's Source Code Actions Speak Louder Than Words
    Why I hate Microsoft
    bsod_videowall
    bsod_airport
    License to plunder
    Microsoft Media Player logs users' DVD picks
    MS wanted to 'extend, embrace and extinguish' competition
    Microsoft Palladium
    Control with fine print
    Microsoft WinXP Update spies on other PC software
    Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design
    Microsoft software "riddled with vulnerabilities", trade body claims
    Microsoft Issues Five New Security Warnings
    Why Open Source Software / Free Software

    --
    If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
    it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
  11. Re:Example Word XML document by TomV · · Score: 2, Informative
    I find it funny that the schema URL's for the various namespaces don't point to existing URL's.

    Don't worry, that's allowed according to the relevant section of the W3C Recommendation on Namespaces in XML:
    [Definition:] The attribute's value, a URI reference, is the namespace name identifying the namespace. The namespace name, to serve its intended purpose, should have the characteristics of uniqueness and persistence. It is not a goal that it be directly usable for retrieval of a schema (if any exists). An example of a syntax that is designed with these goals in mind is that for Uniform Resource Names [RFC2141]. However, it should be noted that ordinary URLs can be managed in such a way as to achieve these same goals.
    I think (off the top of my head) that the reason the markup is so verbose , even though 'All settings (fonts, line spacing, etc) are using defaults' could either be because my defaults might not be the same as your defaults (different locale, for example) or because in defining the schema, they may have decided to make a lot of these elements / attributes compulsory, to be on the safe side. Or both. Or neither of course ;-)

    Actually, looking at it a bit more carefully (OK, repairing it and reformatting it after what /. did to the poor thing, it seems reasonable enough. Defines a bunch of namespaces to keep stuff tidy, and differentiate Office level stuff (o:), Word (w:), Extra word stuff (wx: maybe oversights early in the spec?), then a branch of <w:styles> containing a number of <w:style>s. Then there's a <w:docPr> branch containing what look like Document Properties.

    After the <w:docPr> it's just
    <w:body>
    <wx:sect>
    <w:p><w:r>
    <w:t>Hello World!</w:t>
    </w:r>
    </w:p>
    <w:sectPr>
    <w:pgSz w:w="11906" w:h="16838"/>
    <w:pgMar w:top="1417" w:right="1417" w:bottom="1417" w:left="1417" w:header="708" w:footer="708" w:gutter="0"/>
    <w:cols w:space="708"/>
    <w:docGrid w:line-pitch="360"/>
    </w:sectPr>
    </wx:sect>
    </w :body>

    and a closing </w:wordDocument>.

    Which makes me think it isn't that far from an HTML file with a bunch of <style> in the <head>. Would be interesting to know if the VBA shows up as something pretty much equivalent to <script> tags. You could immediately dispose of a lot of stuff by XPath-ing down to the <w:body>> and ignoring the <wx: stuff.

    There's very little there that you wouldn't have seen in a Word Perfect document using 'show codes', AFAICS.

    TomV

  12. Results of opening in Mozilla--please read by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ignore Slashcode-added semicolons:

    <?mso-application progid="Word.Document"?>
    <w:wordDocument w:macrosPresent="no" w:embeddedObjPresent="no" w:ocxPresent="no" xml:space="preserve">
    <o:DocumentProperties>
    <o:Title>This is a test of XML</o:Title>
    <o:Author>User</o:Author>
    <o:LastAuthor>User</o:LastAuthor>
    <o:Revision>1</o:Revision>
    <o:TotalTime>1</o:TotalTime>
    <o:Created>2003-09-18T15:29:00Z</o:Created>
    &nbsp ; <o:LastSaved>2003-09-18T15:30:00Z</o:LastSaved>
    <o:Pages>1</o:Pages>
    <o:Words>3</o:Words>
    <o:Characters>20</o:Characters>
    &nbsp ; <o:Company>White Goat Studios</o:Company>
    <o:Lines>1</o:Lines>
    <o:Paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs>
    <o:CharactersWithSpaces>22</o:CharactersWithSpaces >
    <o:Version>11.5604</o:Version>
    </o:DocumentProperties>
    <w:fonts>
    <w:defaultFonts w:ascii="Times New Roman" w:fareast="Times New Roman" w:h-ansi="Times New Roman" w:cs="Times New Roman"/>
    <w:font w:name="Verdana">
    <w:panose-1 w:val="020B0604030504040204"/>
    <w:charset w:val="00"/>
    <w:family w:val="Swiss"/>
    <w:pitch w:val="variable"/>
    <w:sig w:usb-0="20000287" w:usb-1="00000000" w:usb-2="00000000" w:usb-3="00000000" w:csb-0="0000019F" w:csb-1="00000000"/>
    </w:font>
    </w:fonts>
    <w:styles>
    <w:versionOfBuiltInStylenames w:val="4"/>
    <w:latentStyles w:defLockedState="off" w:latentStyleCount="156"/>
    <w:style w:type="paragraph" w:default="on" w:styleId="Normal">
    <w:name w:val="Normal"/>
    <w:rPr>
    <wx:font wx:val="Times New Roman"/>
    <w:sz w:val="24"/>
    <w:sz-cs w:val="24"/>
    <w:lang w:val="EN-US" w:fareast="EN-US" w:bidi="AR-SA"/>
    </w:rPr>
    </w:style>
    <w:style w:type="character" w:default="on" w:styleId="DefaultParagraphFont">
    <w:name w:val="Default Paragraph Font"/>
    <w:semiHidden/>
    </w:style>
    </w:styles>
    <w:docPr>
    <w:view w:val="normal"/>
    <w:zoom w:percent="100"/>
    <w:doNotEmbedSystemFonts/>
    <w:proofState w:spelling="clean" w:grammar="clean"/>
    <w:attachedTemplate w:val=""/>
    <w:defaultTabStop w:val="720"/>
    <w:characterSpacingControl w:val="DontCompress"/>
    <w:optimizeForBrowser/>
    <w:validateAgainstSchema/>
    <w:saveInvalidXML w:val="on"/>
    <w:ignoreMixedContent w:val="off"/>
    <w:alwaysShowPlaceholderText w:val="off"/>
    <w:compat>
    <w:breakWrappedTables/>
    <w:snapToGridInCell/>
    <w:wrapTextWithPunct/>
    <w:useAsianBreakRules/>
    <w:useWord2002TableStyleRules/>
    </w:compat>
    </w:docPr>
    <w:body>
    <wx:sect>
    <w:p>
    <w:r>
    <w:t>This is a </w:t>
    </w:r>
    <w:r>
    <w:rPr>
    <w:b/>
    </w:rPr>
    <w:t>test</w:t>
    </w:r>
    <w:r>
    <w:t> of </w:t>
    </w:r>
    <w:r>
    <w:rPr>
    <w:rFonts w:ascii="Verdana" w:h-ansi="Verdana"/>
    <wx:font wx:val="Verdana"/>
    <w:b/>
    <w:i/>
    <w:sz w:val="52"/>
    <w:sz-cs w:val="52"/>
    </w:rPr>
    <w:t>XML</w:t>
    </w:r>
    <w:r>
    <w:t>.</w:t>
    </w:r>
    </w:p>
    <w:sectPr>
    <w:pgSz w:w="12240" w:h="15840"/>
    <w:pgMar w:top="1440" w:right="1800" w:bottom="1440" w:le

    --
    "Sufferin' succotash."
  13. Re:Here is a sample of Word 2003 XML by DickBreath · · Score: 4, Informative

    How much effort is it to zip Word's XML output up?

    If XML is your primary document format, as it is for OOo, then it is important to use Zip. There is another important motivation for OOo to use Zip. Because Zip is a container format, not just a compression format. Multiple XML files. plus bitmaps, and other objects are included within an OOo document.

    Suppose you have a Word doc with lots of bitmaps. If you save this as XML, then those objects must either be (1) Omitted, or (2) converted into a textual form and put into the XML. Contrast with the efficiency of OOo's format. A bitmap or OLE object would just be added to the zip file in its native form. Plus the OOo zip file can contain multiple XML files, such as the Content.xml and a separate style sheet xml, for instance.

    To get to a single item within a Word XML, I would have to parse all of the XML, skipping large blocks of textual binary data. But in OOo's zip file, I have direct lookup access to obtain, say, a bitmap object that I need right now.

    Zip is not used so much for compression as it is as a container. In fact, the OOo zip file could hypothetically not use any compression, yet be fully forward and backward compatible with all implementations of OOo, or even KOffice. Saving a document uncompressed results in faster performance, but it is still a zip of numerous files, including xml files.

    So a future OOo could do a "quick save" in a fully compliant way, but with no compression on some/all of the zip items.


    Also, don't forget that most people if saving as XML won't want to send around a zip file in email as their primary use of such a file format. They're more likely to do something else with the XML data instead. Which means that with OO, you have to unzip it to use it.

    Again, in OOo, the zipped-xml is the primary document format. The fact that standard tools can process it (zip and xml) is just a bonus. OOo doesn't need a separate format (like Word's XML format) to turn documents into a "readable" form.

    OOo's native doc format is already very readable and accessible. Just take a Writer doc (.sxw) rename it to (.zip), unzip it, and you've got a folder of xml files and possibly other files.

    --

    I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  14. Re:Microsoft just doesn't get it by DickBreath · · Score: 2, Informative

    That would be Gates and Allen flipping switches on an Altair?

    This is just about the timeframe I am thinking of.

    By 1978-79 Microsoft Basic is well known, and liked. Microsoft has other great products that I like, such as Microsoft Adventure (a micro computer clone of the famous Adventure game).


    Think about how M$ achieved its market presence.

    By leveraging monopolies. Exclusionary agreements that prevented any other successful OS. In the early 80's, there were some other OS choices before MS-DOS became entrenched. You could just circle ALL on the back of a reader service card in BYTE and mail it in. Soon you would be inundated with mail advertising, among other things, OSes. MS agreements with hardware makers were such that if you sold any PC's with DOS, then you had to pay for DOS for every PC shipped, even if that PC is shipped with a competing OS. This pretty much kills the market for any other OS. Plain simple anticompetitive.

    That is how they achieved their success.

    Being able to buy an OS-less PC does NOT somehow undo the fact that MS is a monopoly and has worked to maintain and even leverage monopoly power.

    --

    I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.