On the Ms point.. is your argument that we should have no intellectual property rights for software at all? It seems odd to single out only this example. I’m broadly not in favour of software patents but I’m not clear that they were relevant to MS success anyway. I think you need to make a clearer argument about what regulations we would have forgone for others to really evaluate your case.
Obviously not. That would require opinion, and sharing opinion is in bad faith. Discussion is merely for talking about how the world is. And as the way the world is, a monopoly needs some kind of moat to emerge. Intellectual property regulation exists to enable such moats.
> It seems odd to single out only this example.
Why? One example is all that is necessary to convey the idea.
But also, it is the only convicted monopolist in that respect that I could think off off the top of my head. Google was recently charged, but not yet convicted, so I could not include them. I am not about to suggest that other companies are monopolies based on my opinion. That, again, would be in bad faith. But, theoretically, the same could apply to other companies. It is not something that needs to be strictly limited to Microsoft.
Same goes for Microsoft. Everyone and their brother would have released their own 'Windows' if regulation weren't there to disallow it. Again, that regulation offered a moat which allowed them to establish their monopoly.