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A comment on The Windows Update Marathon in a VM: From Windows 1.01 to XP. Parent comment

Re:The Windows Update Marathon in a VM: From Windows 1.01 to XP by lima on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @08:09AM (#21451987)
The antitrust case helped, but it's only thanks to massive reverse engineer efforts by open source developers that this kind of compatibility exists. Even when you have the specs, it's a massive effort to re-implement.

> Being retro-compatible in a walled garden only doesn't make all that sense.

It makes perfect sense from the company's point of view.

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Re:The Windows Update Marathon in a VM: From Windows 1.01 to XP by darkwater on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @10:59AM (#21453513)
>> Being retro-compatible in a walled garden only doesn't make all that sense.

> It makes perfect sense from the company's point of view.

Yeah, for sure, but I was criticizing OP that was praising MS for still being compatible with their own 20+ years old proprietary and hegemonic document format.

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Re:The Windows Update Marathon in a VM: From Windows 1.01 to XP by gmueckl on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @10:06AM (#21452979)
Well, it was kind of the old way of inplementing a subscription based business model: want to stay compatible with the rest of the world? Pay up!
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