SH>> [IBM was] given a choice - just hours (NOT days) before the release 
 SH>> of Win'95 (not an acronym, BTW). If they wanted to be able to bundle it 
 SH>> with their machines, they had to quit MARKETING OS/2. Not "pull the
plug" 
 SH>> on it, but stop marketing it.

 JS> I'm sure that all came out in the DOJ law suit against MS, right?

Actually, yes it did.  I followed that part of the testimony with some
interest.  It turned out that Microsoft put the screws on IBM about the
royalties that IBM was paying to Microsoft for the Windows 3.1 kernel bundled
with OS/2, claiming that IBM had underpaid, and demanded an audit.  Alongside
that, it tried to link the outcome of this audit of OS/2 royalties to the
entirely separate issue of the price which the IBM PC Company had to pay for
the copies of DOS-Windows 95 that it would be pre-installing on its machines.  
The wrangling went on right up until the night before the actual launch of
DOS-Windows 95, at which point IBM caved in, and agreed to promoting
DOS-Windows 95 as its primary operating system, at the expense of OS/2.  (This 
is what Microsoft's "market development agreements" require.) Whereupon
Microsoft agreed that in exchange IBM could buy the OEM licences for
DOS-Windows 95 for pre-installing at a much lower price.  According to the
trial coverage at _The Register_, this reduction in the price of DOS-Windows
95 saved IBM almost $50,000,000 .

In other words, for agreeing to promote and use DOS-Windows 95 in 75% to 90%
of all cases, IBM gained the ability to buy DOS-Windows 95 at roughly the same 
price that Microsoft was charging to the likes of Dell, HP, and Gateway,
rather than at a much higher price.

 ¯ JdeBP ®

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