Hi Allan
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>I dont know if the world would be any better off with out MS and maybe if Apple had been able to creat product that could compete with MS you could still be using there software, but they could not compete for one reason or another. But what I do know is that MS has done alot for the advacement of software.
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>Bill Winter


Well, your speculation is no worse than my own. Without MS, possibly Apple or IBM would have become the monopoly in pc software that an MS vacuum would have created.

Whether or not MS has done a lot for the advancement of software is certainly a debatable point. Borland's Delphi (prior to both Java and C#) and Kylyx are wonderful products. Unfortunately, they are marketed by a company that is not MS, so they simply get less play.

Has MS done more for software development than Linus Torvalds? I don't know. If Bill Gates had not decided that long time ago that nobody in the world would ever need more than 640K, would 64 bit systems have evolved long before now? Who knows. Would we have had a world of true multitasking systems if Windows had never evolved along the path it did? I don't know. Would MS have ever jumped into the .Net with C# with both feet without the scare of Java? I can't answer that either.

I doubt it's really very productive to speculate on how much a virtual monopoly has 'done for the advancement of software'. The world goes where MS points. Where the world of software would be now had MS never happened, it's hard to say.

I can't really argue it. You may be right, but then....

Alan