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Microsoft is not an innovator. They imitate, buy or steal. Internet Explorer is an imitation of Netscape Navigator. And Microsoft didn't even create their imitation on their own. They bought a license for a browser called Mosaic from Spyglass so they could use Mosaic as a starting point for Explorer.
Microsoft's disk compression utility which they incorporated into MS-DOS 6 was stolen from a small company called Stac. Microsoft tried to license Stac's disk compression program. Stac rejected the offer. Microsoft copied it. Stac later sued and won.
Microsoft Visual BASIC is based on another company's program. Microsoft bought the company and changed the name of the product.
Microsoft's Object Linking and Embedding standard, called OLE or ActiveX, was stolen from a smaller company which later sued Microsoft and won.
Microsoft FoxPro started out as another company's program before Microsoft bought the company.
MS-DOS was not created by Microsoft. It was developed by Seattle Computer under the name Q-DOS ("quick and dirty disk operating system"). Microsoft bought the program for a few thousand dollars without informing the author that IBM was interested in the operating system. Seattle Computer later sued Microsoft. Microsoft settled.
MS-Windows was an imitation of the Macintosh Operating System. Microsoft became familiar with the Mac Graphical User Interface (GUI) while writing applications for Apple computers. Gates liked the interface so much that he used many of the ideas in Windows.
The first GUI was created in the 70s at XeroxPARC. It was used by Apple and Amiga years before Microsoft created MS-Windows.
The combination of Windows Explorer (the file manager) and Internet Explorer (the web browser) in Windows 98 is nothing new or innovative. Netscape Navigator (starting with the Windows 3.x version), Arachne (a free web browser for DOS), and Lynx (a free web browser for UNIX) all allow a user to view both network files and files on the local hard disk. Arachne even allows a user to copy, move, and delete DOS files through the web browser.
Not
Invented Here (A page from the Boycott Microsoft website)
Hall
of Innovation (Another relevant page from the Boycott
Microsoft website)
Back to my general "venting" page
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