trickle up poverty

Well? I liked Netscape but it is gone. So what? MS developed its OS and many companies have made millions off of them in the add on software end of things. I mean really though what was the purpose of the entire thing anyway? MS offered a browser and people got it instead of Netscape. What was the end game? Seriously what?

MS had nothing to gain. IE is an included browser now. Why does MS allow any software to run on Windows? I am serious what was the endgame for MS? What competition was Netscape? MS could have sold its browser as well but did not. Why did they even offer it? They did not gain from it. Was Netscape developing an operating system?

What was the endgame in this?

 

The poster politicalcenter made a statement that, in considering an international market, I had "forgot" the issue of selling items below cost... I provided a rather famous example showing this has occurred within the U.S. market already, and is therefore not unique to international trade.

You made some off topic remark about all browsers and most software being free. I clarified the reference you seemed to not understand.

Netscape was the de facto standard and market leader web browser. The threat it represented to Microsoft was as follows:

"Industry observers confidently forecast the dawn of a new era of connected computing. The underlying operating system, it was believed, would become an unimportant consideration; future applications would run within a web browser. This was seen by Netscape as a clear opportunity to entrench Navigator at the heart of the next generation of computing, and thus gain the opportunity to expand into all manner of other software and service market."(*)​

Microsoft allows software to run on it's operating system because that makes the computers using it more valuable to users (and thus increases sales of their operating system as more users buy copies).

Microsoft's "endgame" was to disarm the threat that Netscape represented of a single user experience across multiple platforms. The idea that future user experience would occur primarily in the web browser would diminish the importance of or eliminate the need for a complex, user focused, operating system. Removing that threat by displacing Netscape allowed Microsoft to retain it's ability to differentiate windows as an OS, position Windows as a still relevant and important tool, and increase the barrier of migration to other platforms. The endgame was to allow Microsoft to sell more copies of Windows. The endgame was to make money.

 

Thank you. I really never paid it any mind and though it was in the news.

 

its not practical to use any other operating system other than microsofts because the patent laws have influenced the computer industry to sell products that are compatible with only microsoft systems.

if the patent laws did not reward bill gates and microsoft corp he would not be so rich because many people would build better products and improve the operating system experience.

this is an example of trickle up poverty because innovation is stifled by the rich

 

Actually not; there are open APIs and the hardware does not need a specific Operating System. Yes there are hardware devices with drivers only for windows and Open Source drivers are written for FreeBSD, LINUX, well this is easier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_operating_systems

Though the home user gets more from MS an office can do without MS. Many servers run open source as well.

Open Source OSs just do not get much attention from the big time developers.

Oh you can run many Windows apps on Linux and others as well; WINE.