Horse Pucky! Bill and MS got fat off piracy. They had no problem look the other way when IBM's BIOS was cloned. It would been very simple to only let his OS work with authorized IBM bios only.
If any one got screw in the long run it was IBM and Microsoft got fat on it
In addition there have been dozen of copy protection scheme (over the phone lock and key, doungle on parallel port, etc.) the all been used and flopped.
Not because they did prevent piracy, they did, but they flopped because were a pain to use and end user prefer a noncopy protected app.
For ever app Microsoft sells today you find there once was a competing copy protected app that died.
Whoa, calm down there cowboy!
First off, the only commercial "cloned" version of IBM's BIOS was the short-lived Columbia. Oops, scratch that -- it should have been "second off", because the actual "first off" is best expressed in a question for you: what part of "IBM did not negotiate an exclusive license" don't you understand?
OK, moving right along...
Third off -- why on earth would MS -- the owner of the OS that they licensed non-exclusively to IBM, Compaq, Corona, etc. -- only allow their product to work in one slice of the market pie?
Well? I'm waiting. This oughta be good, *chuckle*!
"If any one got screw in the long run it was IBM and Microsoft got fat on it"
...
Not because they did prevent piracy, they did, but they flopped because were a pain to use and end user prefer a noncopy protected app.
Help me out here. I'm having a hard time figuring out if English is not your native tongue, or, if you're merely spitting mad over this stuff.