Re: Software Economics was RE: Ada 95 for an ARM-based bare board?

[dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)]

dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) wrote in message news:<5ee5b646.0208241353.5f69b4bf@posting.google.com>...
> If Microsoft had been giving away a limited version of IE free with
> the intention of stimulating sales for the non-free $$ version from
> which they
> could make lots of money, that's a totally different manner. Free

I have seen it argued that they were doing something close to that:
substitute "web server" for "version" above, and you have it. That's
certianly what Netscape was doing (the browser was downloadable and
licensed for free for non-commercial use).

However, I don't think that's accurate either. In the view of the
courts at least, Microsoft gave away the browser to take market share
from 3rd parties (like Netscape), so they could neutralize the threat
posed to their platform monopoly by web browsers. It wasn't giving it
away for free ($$$) that did the trick either. Again, Netscape also
was licensed to home users at no cost, and was doing OK for years
against Explorer. It was the various strong-arm tactics employed by
Microsoft leveraging against their monopoly (eg: integrating it and
distributing it with the OS, pressuring PC makers to not distribute
the competition, etc.), that made the difference.