It wasn't so much offering a browser for free as compelling PC vendors to not bundle their competitor's browser. You might of course argue that a PC should have zero browsers bundled...

Nobody did word processing in edlin.

The version of basic included with most computers didn't allow you to compile your program.

There were innumerable code text editors for DOS.

Besides, what you're saying is people wrote better replacements for the bundled stuff. Netscape, however, was worse than Explorer.

Both parties offered a free browser. Boo-hoo.

Have you noticed that vast categories of computer programs are free today? Do you realize that every one of those was funded by revenue obtained elsewhere?

That whole anti-trust case was chock full of jaw-dropping absurdities.

BTW, the D Language Foundation is funded by donations. We charge $0 for our products. Anyone can also fork it and do whatever they please with the fork. We particularly like it when people use it for commercial purposes, i.e. making money!

This is largely true, of course, but also a complete non sequitur? There have been free and donation based things for a long time. Shareware was very awesome, to me.

But to pretend Microsoft was not engaging in questionable practices feels very bullshit heavy. And an equivalency game here is very discrediting to both arguments.

What is "questionable" about it?

Questionable about their practices? I remember the effort it used to take to get netscape to be the browser your machine used. It was comically difficult to do, at times. So much so that I was never comfortable going for the paid Opera, as I just didn't think it would stick to my machine.

It is frustrating, because I think it is largely fair to say that netscape was the worse option at the time. Navigator was largely trash. That said, jscript and activex controls were both obvious land grabs on the internet. I'm... not really sure how most any part of what all Microsoft did back then can be defended.

> jscript and activex controls were both obvious land grabs on the internet

Jscript was developed originally for Netscape in 1995 and was standardized in 1997. Not sure how that is a questionable land grab by Microsoft.

P.S. I wrote a jscript interpreter back in 1999 or so. It was used as a drop in replacement for Microsoft's implementation. It did not require heroic efforts to make.

I remember jscript being mainly a way for them to not have to use the name javascript. Which, fair that that entire history is nonsense. I have weaker memories of doing things that would work in jscript that would not work in javascript. But, I also consider that in my concession that navigator was not a good browser.

You comparing the D Language Foundation to Microsoft here is nothing short of hilarious. Does your nonprofit even have employees? How much of the market have you captured? How many billions of dollars in revenue are you getting?