Maybe he did, but luck that lasts 20 years really does require a lot of 4-leaf clovers !

Or very good lawyers (he is the son of a lawyer) and stupid OEMs. It is well known that he ripped off the CP/M OS when DOS was written, and that the very first MS BASIC was so buggy they had a very limited demo to try and get it sold (which they did).

How about the restriction that was imposed on OEMs that said that if they sold computers with DOS/Windows on them, they couldn't have any other OS installed on any system they sold, and if there was, they still had to pay the license fee for Windows?

MS have reached their dominant position by very clever use of licenses, not on merit.

How many innovations have MS come up with themselves and how many have been 'aquired' from others?

The list of countries moving over to Open Source software is growing. MS are justifiably starting to worry about F/OSS.

Oh, and Linux is easy to use. Easier than MS software in some cases. You don't have the MS mantra of "You WILL do it this way" with Linux. You can be different.

Andy

In reply to a post by Shielder:

It is well known that he ripped off the CP/M OS when DOS was written,

A cute choice of words there. BG and MS did not write DOS but bought it in.

Adrian, I'm not judging you, but you do appear to have this big hatred for Bill Gates, and Microsoft, and the word "pay" seems to crop up in your posts quite a lot. To me, Microsoft is just one company that I buy stuff from, and if I spent my time worrying about the ethics and morals of the people I buy stuff from, I wouldn't sleep at all !

I made the mention of pirated software because you made a comment about Windows security, and pirated software is one of the best ways of getting malware on your machine.

In reply to a post by Shielder:

Or very good lawyers (he is the son of a lawyer) and stupid OEMs. It is well known that he ripped off the CP/M OS when DOS was written, and that the very first MS BASIC was so buggy they had a very limited demo to try and get it sold (which they did).

How about the restriction that was imposed on OEMs that said that if they sold computers with DOS/Windows on them, they couldn't have any other OS installed on any system they sold, and if there was, they still had to pay the license fee for Windows?

MS have reached their dominant position by very clever use of licenses, not on merit.

How many innovations have MS come up with themselves and how many have been 'aquired' from others?

The list of countries moving over to Open Source software is growing. MS are justifiably starting to worry about F/OSS.

Oh, and Linux is easy to use. Easier than MS software in some cases. You don't have the MS mantra of "You WILL do it this way" with Linux. You can be different.

Andy

I think you are getting very confused - DOS was not an operating system - it was a disk operating system. MS Basic (often bundled with DOS) was the OS, but with no GUI. In any case (as pointed out by another poster) neither MS or Bill Gates wrote MS DOS - they bought it from someone else. BG was and still is a very keen businessman.

I also think that you are overlooking other OS's which have competed with Windows, and failed. Like Gem, OS/2, etc.

In reply to a post by zebedeee:

Adrian, I'm not judging you, but you do appear to have this big hatred for Bill Gates, and Microsoft, and the word "pay" seems to crop up in your posts quite a lot. To me, Microsoft is just one company that I buy stuff from, and if I spent my time worrying about the ethics and morals of the people I buy stuff from, I wouldn't sleep at all !

I don't know Bill Gates so I can't hate him. I don't hate Microsoft, I can see what they have done and how far they have come. I also can see how they made the computer easy to use for the average Joe. But the company is just too powerful now.

Like a lot of people I would love to get things for nothing, I am not too proud to say so either.

Som etimes you need to worry about ethics, I must admit it don't normally bother me that much and I am not the sort of person to boycott stuff because of it. I tend not to buy stuff that is from Israel, but that is me. It is difficult to boycott things these days as so many companies are owned by others.

I made the mention of pirated software because you made a comment about Windows security, and pirated software is one of the best ways of getting malware on your machine.

I know where you are coming from. but it is still easy to get pirated software with out Malware.

As I said I will download pirated software to see what it is like and if I like I will buy it, if I don't then I will erase the pirated software. Never had a problems with viruses.