> I use Windows at work, as my company is a Microsoft shop. I use Firefox,
> Thunderbird and Pidgin instead of the MS equivalents. My boss tolerates
> my love of Free software, but never misses a chance to tease me about
> Linux and how "they missed their chance" or whatever.
I once worked for a company called Be, Inc. They had a really great
operating system. More than that, it was POSIX enough your command-line
apps compiled easily, and easy/pretty enough it was fun to use. This was
back before GNOME or KDE caught on, when Linux was genuinely ugly to
look at most of the time.
We had a product that was going to ship on devices. We had the
deals, we had dates. Microsoft violated NDAs and threatened hardware
manufacturers. They stopped the product from shipping. They killed BeOS.
Of course, as the shareholders wanted money more than actually proving
monopolistic practices, the issue was settled out of court.
Microsoft competitors rarely "miss" chances. Typically it is just MS not
playing by the same rules as the competition. Linux has done quite well
for itself, considering who they are competing against.
Cheers,
Steven Black
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