Deriving everything from one base class is not cleaner! It means that you have horrible container classes like Java's vector, which is about as type-unsafe as you can get and requires vast amounts of icky casting whenever you use it.
This is not capitalism, of course- in most industries, competition is seen as a normal and healthy thing. I feel that within the Microsoft culture, competition from other companies is seen as as best a distraction from _real_ innovation, and at worst a positive roadblock- such that one could easily picture Microsoft people lobbying the government to shut down a competitor that stood in the way of Microsoft expansion. "You're hurting the economic growth of the whole country by allowing them to keep operating like that! They're blocking innovation!"
That is exactly what capitalism is! Companies don't just sit there and think 'Gee, isn't great that our competitors are doing well', they aim to wipe out their competitors and give themselves a monopoly or get themself into position where thay can set up a nice little cartel. Neither of these encourage competition which is why we have anti-monopoly and anti-price-fixing legislation. And what's so unusual about companies lobbying governments to give them some advantage or other? It happens all the time all over the world.
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Deriving everything from one base class is not cleaner! It means that you have horrible container classes like Java's vector, which is about as type-unsafe as you can get and requires vast amounts of icky casting whenever you use it.
That is exactly what capitalism is! Companies don't just sit there and think 'Gee, isn't great that our competitors are doing well', they aim to wipe out their competitors and give themselves a monopoly or get themself into position where thay can set up a nice little cartel. Neither of these encourage competition which is why we have anti-monopoly and anti-price-fixing legislation. And what's so unusual about companies lobbying governments to give them some advantage or other? It happens all the time all over the world.