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Newer page: version 11 Last edited on Monday, May 2, 2005 2:56:50 am by JoeUser
Older page: version 10 Last edited on Saturday, May 29, 2004 2:13:50 pm by DanielLawson Revert
@@ -75,8 +75,8 @@
  
 Windows 3.1 gave a warning message if it was being run on DRDOS rather than MSDOS, even though it worked just as well on either. Presumably this was to scare people into only using MSDOS. 
 see [AARD Code|http://members.ozemail.com.au/~geoffch/editorial/aard/index.html] 
  
-When Microsoft decided to enter the web browser market, they didn't start by writing Internet Explorer from scratch; they licensed web browser software from Spyglass. The license agreement gave Spyglass 5% of gross revenue on sales of the product, which doesn't sound too bad. However, given that they get most of their revenue from Windows and Office sales, Microsoft has always given Internet Explorer away for free, and what is 5% of ?  
+When Microsoft decided to enter the web browser market, they didn't start by writing Internet Explorer from scratch; they licensed web browser software from Spyglass. The license agreement gave Spyglass 5% of gross revenue on sales of the product, which doesn't sound too bad. However, given that they get most of their revenue from Windows and Office sales, Microsoft stopped selling Internet Explorer after version 1.0 (with the Windows 95 Plus Pack), and started giving it away for free.  
  
 In the early nineties, a company named "Stac" had as its flagship product a program named "Stacker", that transparently compressed and then de-compressed files on-the-fly. This product had versions for MS-DOS version 5, [IBM]'s OS/2, and [Apple]'s [Macintosh] operating systems. Microsoft 
 were interested in incorporating this functionality in their next version, MS-DOS 6, and approached Stac about licensing. During discussions, Microsoft gained information about technical details of the software. When MS-DOS 6 came out, it included !DoubleSpace, which eventually a jury found infringed on Stac's patents, and Stac was awarded US$120 million damages. But by then it didn't matter, as their product was effectively marginalised. (Incidentally, Microsoft counter-claimed that Stac had illegally reversed engineered MS-DOS because they were using undocumented DOS functions). Also, MSDOS 6.0 included changes that broke Stacker, although the company quickly produced an updated version that worked with 6.0.