Re: And other times it worked out pretty well.
"Stacker->Doublespace"... Microsoft stole it, and lost the lawsuit. Unfortunately, the company was put out of business by the lawsuit.
"1-2-3->excel" ... DOS isn't done til xyz won't run.. introducing artificial failures to force other companies out.
"WordPerfect/WordStar -> Word" breaking contracts, illegal business activities, and another lost lawsuit, and forced yet another company out of business.
"OS/2* -> Windows NT" first breaking a contract with IBM.
"Lotus Notes -> Exchange" That one I'll grant was a better product. Though it was very insecure (it didn't properly even handle SMTP as it couldn't even reject a message due to insufficent disk space; instead it would crash).
"Netware -> Windows NT and later Active Directory", better product, but adding deliberate incompatibility with established standards (Kerberos, LDAP, and DNS), and insecurity. Had they actually gone with the standards they would have been in position to take over support for UNIX and Linux, which would have gotten them into supercomputing and distributed systems (now called clusters). As it is, it has shut them out of those markets.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
