Excuse me to interfere into your conversation, but I feel the same invisible prison taking my freedom.
We daily use MS products (dev tools, NT, 98, IIS, office, and so on).

I've never seen a company with such a presence !

I'm a fan of Communicator. But I have to use IE to update my Win98 system, so I'm forced to have it onto my PC. An we can find lots of examples like this.

With IBM systems (I mean OS400, OS/2, AIX) , thing are at least clear : you belongs to the family, since they drive all your company management. You HAVE to choose in a determined list of tools, peripherals, languages, even courses. Big Brother (excuse me, I mean Big Blue) is omipresent, but he never tries to betray you. And you know the cost before.

But the problem with MS is that they have a monopol without naming it. Things are subtle, so they manipulate the computers world and appear innocent. See Guy's phrase : You don't have to use IE4 as your browser. For my vision of the computer world (which is to my opinion a time saving tool) : Shocking ! Remember the Ford T model, or Pink Floyd's movie "The Wall".

We humans aren't identical. So why should we have the same tools ?
The computer world is full of other deserving company, I have an example for each activity. OS ? Linux, BeOS, Word Processor ? CA-Textor, Dev tool ? Borland C++ Builder, Objective-C, GNU-C. I could continue for days.

I believe in developer community. I just wait for Linux to be mature, and I'll leave that old evil MS Visual Basic tied up to MS IE, tied up to MS Windows, tied up to the PC.

Ahhh ! i feel better !