Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 15th Oct 2009 14:47 UTC
Let's do a little trip down memory lane. We're talking the '80s, early '90s, and we're looking at a company called Borland, which produced several well-known and popular products related to software development. Back in those days, Borland had an end user license agreement. However, contrary to the EULAs we know and despise today, Borland's 'No-Nonsense License Statement' was a whole lot simpler, and in fact, is a perfect example of how software should be treated.
Permalink for comment 389569
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:
2007-07-13
Still it was a great company and MFC is no match for OWL.
I agree. OWL was a very nice model and far more object oriented that the heap of macro rubbish that was MFC (a blight shared by Qt and Gtk+).
How soon everyone forgets! Borland C++ was a real threat to Microsoft's crappy Visual Studio. OWL was a dream compared to MFC, and had the possibility of being portable to OS/2 as well.
So what happened? MS delayed licensing the Win32 APIs to Borland ('cutting off their air' - although this phrase was earlier used by MS in an different context). Everyone was rushing to move to the exciting new Win32 platform Win95 and MS Visual Studio had the goods and Borland didn't (despite trying to get a license for it). Borland couldn't complain to Commerce as they needed the libraries from MS or they knew they were dead meat (they originally had Win32s compatibility library but that was a bridging step until the real Win32 library and platform came out). The rest, as they say, is history. Borland were only one in a long list of competitors to MS that were strangled for being a threat to the company that controlled the platform. That's why people with long memories are very, very wary about relying on Microsoft for technology (I bet you were too young at the time and now too full of hubris to remember this history Mono team?).