Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: 4.0.3

Andrew Brown wrote:
> yes where MS currently dominates, but not for long.

Of course one also has to look at why MS dominates.  The reasons include
strong arming and extortion.  MS has long been an unethical company,
going back to when Bill Gates and Paul Allen developed a BASIC
interpreter for the Altair 8800 computer.  MITS, the company that
produced the Altair hired Bill Gates and Paul Allen to create the
interpreter.  They developed it on the Harvard computers, in violation
of policy that those computer not be used for commercial purposes. 
Then, after BG saw the commercial potential for BASIC, claimed he owned
the software MITS had paid for.  Then in the DOS/early Windows days, MS
required computer manufacturers to pay for a licence on every computer
sold, regardless whether it shipped with DOS/Windows.  There was also a
test in Windows to see if it was running on DR-DOS and would then throw
up a bogus error message.  Then there was the issue of Windows API,
where MS apps ran better than competitor's, because MS used hidden API
that were not available to competitors.  Or how they told WordPerfect
about the new Windows API, but changed them just before Windows 95
(IIRC) was released.  Or how MS refused to licence Windows 95 to IBM,
unless IBM stopped promoting OS/2 (there's also the incident where MS
misappropriated IBM's money for OS/2 development to Windows).  Or how
they claimed in court the Internet Explorer couldn't be removed because
it was part of the operating system.  It wasn't at the time, but soon
became so, opening up all sorts of security problems is in the process. 
More recently, with site licences, MS requires all computers to be
licensed, even if they can't run the software.  The list of MS unethical
behaviour is a long one.

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