> Windows is slightly unusual in that it's a product that goes with another 
> product (but the other product is useless without it - or some other 
> manufacturer's equivilent). The only analogy I can come up with is 
> Goodyear ordering Ford not to sell cars that have tires that aren't 
> Goodyear,

No, the analogy would be that Goodyear says to Ford that it will charge 
double for tyres if it sells any cars without Goodyear tyres.  Yes that 
already happens in other business areas (ok not usually double the price).

> According to the history books, the story goes that IBM wanted an OS, 
> Gate's mum knew somebody at IBM, so Gates stole an OS off one of his mates

Hehe, I think you'll find he *bought* it, from someone who would end up 
working at MS anyway (developing the OS, one would assume):

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa033099.htm

> It's news to me that Microsoft does have to share their secrets.

The latest EU ruling said they had to share source code and protocol 
specifications for their server networking stuff.  The massive fines they 
were getting on a daily basis were because they had failed to do this 
(originally they just provided the source code to competitors, but 
apparently this was not enough).

> Sure. The only other possibility I see is Apple, and they won't.

Of course, because if Apple sold their OS to work on generic hardware nobody 
would buy Apple hardware :-)

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