> From what I heard, Internet Explorer was stolen from a company called 
> Spyglass.
>
> Spyglass were selling a web browser, M$ licenced the code from them, 
> developed IE, and then gave it away for free (in violation of the terms of 
> the licence with Spyglass). Spyglass promptly went bankrupt before they 
> could sue M$.

Oh joy, another one of your completely made-up stories bashing MS :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc.

> A similar story happened at the beginning of the Microsoft story, but 
> since I don't recall the precise facts right now I'll leave that one.

Yeh, if you are even admitting to not recalling the precise facts this time 
then perhaps best not to :-)

> The way I heard it, it was more like "you will agree to these terms or you 
> can't have our product".

That's impossible, because as pointed out you can just go to a normal shop 
and buy it if you can't get it directly from MS.  The worst MS could do was 
"you will agree to these terms or you will have to buy it at the normal 
price the public pays for it".

> Yeah, well, when car manufacturers lobby the government saying "people 
> aren't buying as many cars as they used to; I think we should get 
> government subsidies", people just laugh and say "no".

Or offer 2000 GBP for your old cars if you buy a new one :-)

> Like, if Tesco decided to start giving away a free bestselling book with 
> every purchase, they'd have a problem because they'd be using grocery 
> sales to put book sellers out of business.

That's not illegal.  In fact it's common practise for supermarkets to use 
"loss leaders" like petrol and milk/sugar that actually lose them money, to 
encourage people to come in and spend on the more profitable items.  What 
*is* illegal is if the manufacturer tries to tell Tesco what price they 
should sell at.

> Well, that's fair enough. But when a business announces something they 
> have no intention of making just for the financial effect it will have on 
> a potential competetor... that's not really fair.

Charities are for being fair, businesses are for making money and crushing 
the competition.

> Oracle is a big corporation too, but I have nothing against them. Their 
> product is extremely expensive, but it's also high-quality and resonably 
> well documented. Oracle didn't get to be where they are now by stealing 
> other people's stuff,

Oh really:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle

and you should read this:

http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,39048963,00.htm

As I said, pretty much any large company is going to have done some "unfair" 
things, otherwise they wouldn't have grown to be a large company.

Post a reply to this message