Self-righteous indignation ahoy! We must have entered yet another ideal-free-markets vs. everything else discussion on Hacker News.
Frustrated as you may be that others don't share your ideals here, your entire comment is huge, deep red, herring.
And there is much more to monopolies than just 'success', you silly. Ever heard of the Microsoft tax? Every OEM was in a losing position if they dared to offer a non-Microsoft OS among their product lines, as they would be sold their licenses at a higher cost (i.e., not at a monetary discount resulting of a virtuous association between entrepreneurs) than every other player in the game.
Thus, even if there was demand for alternatives, if it didn't overtake the loss incurred by higher cost-licenses then it wouldn't be viable to offer say, Linux machines.
I don't expect anyone to share my values, nor do I care if they do for the sake of the argument, as you'll note below where I went out of my way to thank @arg01 for his reasoned argument.
You probably won't like this, but those businesses existed because of what Microsoft created and it deserved to charge whatever it liked to its customers. We are speaking here of rights, not virtues or morality, so you'll find my "self-righteous indignation" to be in short supply. Just as Microsoft was free to charge what they liked for the fruits of their labor, OEMs were free to not attempt to profit off a product Microsoft created. Microsoft made its money from selling software, an intangible thing of no value without hardware to run it on. Those OEMs existed because they were able to create hardware better than Microsoft. Obviously though, it was Windows that was of more value (more difficult to create) of the two, which is why Microsoft held more leverage. This is a _good_ thing to have success rewarded.
No company has a right to profits. In a free market they must compete by the merits of the value they offer to free men.
Frustrated as you may be that others don't share your ideals here, your entire comment is huge, deep red, herring.
And there is much more to monopolies than just 'success', you silly. Ever heard of the Microsoft tax? Every OEM was in a losing position if they dared to offer a non-Microsoft OS among their product lines, as they would be sold their licenses at a higher cost (i.e., not at a monetary discount resulting of a virtuous association between entrepreneurs) than every other player in the game.
Thus, even if there was demand for alternatives, if it didn't overtake the loss incurred by higher cost-licenses then it wouldn't be viable to offer say, Linux machines.