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  • From: "Thomas A. Beckett" <thomas AT tbeckett.com>
  • To: InterNetWorkers <internetworkers AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: more subjective history question
  • Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 17:58:51 -0500


Steven Champeon wrote:
> Read this:
> http://www.unionrecord.com/biz/display.php?ID=1785

> I don't agree entirely, but he makes an interesting - if not
> rock-solid - case for the idea that Microsoft destroyed everyone's
> chances of making a dime on the Internet by giving away the browser.
> Not just Netscape. I think the author forgets that Netscape gave away
> the browser first, then revised their plan to mean "free for
> educational and non-commercial use". I remember the uproar about that.
> But anyway. I dunno, just throwing gas on the fire.

Hmmn, yeah. The idea of giving away the broswer in order to make a
market for the servers seems like a fundamentally sound one -- if you're
Netscape. But lots of good arguments there against such a model.

OTOH, I rarely paid for software even before the Internet. More
frequently, I got it passed along on disk from friends. WordPerfect, I
paid for that. Not much else. To me, Microsoft did not create the
notion that "information wants to be free".

TaB




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