>This is definitely true. Companies don't want to make their products too compatible with MS technologies because they don't want to help MS. On the other hand, MS is the standard and if you don't support standards and can't make your own, you're toast. Of course, MS has the advantage of owning the standards. If they're trying to enhance a product and run into a bug in OLE, they can just fix it. They also have advance knowledge of where these standards are going.

The benefits of being a front-runner, leader, or whatever you want to call it, is being able to define or set the standards. :)