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To: colette_g
"I believe they termed it their 'like a book' license."

I believe they did away with it too.

Borland was a bootstrap operation, and they did some asymmetrical warfare type marketing to establish their presence. Remeber "Frank Borland" the cartoon prospector, hawking the $39 Turbo Pascal compiler?

Try to get a $39 compiler from Borland today and see where it gets ya.

They did stir things up alright. MS's BASCOM compiler suddenly had the bottom drop out from under it, but they spun on a dime and came out with QuicBasic, in the same price range at Turbo Pascal.

Then Borland decided to sock it to Bellevue by releasing Turbo Basic, but, they learned their lesson when MS came out with Quick Pascal -- nicer than Turbo Pascal, and just as inexpensive (but notably more expensive than when TP was initially released).

Kahn made a giant sucking sound, and sold off TB, and MS let QP die on the vine.

The point of all this is that the "like a book" thing wasn't some grand gesture of altruism -- it was guerilla marketing plain and simple. No one makes money giving products away, unless it's carefully managed as a market share maneuver, and cast aside as soon as feasible.

124 posted on 01/10/2002 11:33:32 AM PST by Don Joe
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To: Don Joe
Ah, Turbo Pascal for $39 - them were the days! Delphi Professional costs a little bit more than that now!
134 posted on 01/10/2002 11:53:27 AM PST by colette_g
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