alt Hacker NewsSeriously, I consider this to be Microsoft's key innovation: the idea that people should pay for software and that people should be forced to pay for software.
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flomo • today at 8:01 AM
What Microsoft actually did was make deals with OEMs and distributors so they got paid for every machine sold. In the 1980s, home computers had MS-BASIC in the ROMs, and PCs came with "Vendor DOS", you couldn't even buy MS-DOS.
The payment for software was well established on big iron by the 1970s before Microsoft were established