I think you misunderstand the original intention.

Bill Gates for everything else about the man, was about making things usable for the average person. Did this always work? Nope. Did they cut a lot of corners out of laziness? Yup. Did they do illegal things with their monopoly? Sure did. Was adding IE one of them? Not from their point of view.

From their point of view, they created software to fill a need their customers wanted. ActiveX, piece of trash? Yup. Made to destroy other browsers? Not likely. ActiveX was a lazy way of fixing a complex problem. They had a lot of that over the years.

People make it sound like they went out of their way to destroy Netscape. I don't think that was the case at all, because what would they gain from it? Windows was already dominant with no other competition in sight, and they didn't sell IE. The more likely answer is they went to make a better experience for their users, and Netscape being ruined was an unfortunate side effect that frankly, didn't matter one way or another to them.

I can honestly say that of the places I've contracted at, small to medium businesses are the more likely to want support contracts. See the big companies assume their covered. The little guys like the assurance of one less thing to worry about. You may think you've convinced them that they don't need that support contract, you haven't. If you start trying to convince the owner of a company that they don't need support, they start looking for a second opinion because the idea that you don't need support goes against common sence.

At to the point about firefox, firefox and open office are 2 rare apps amongst thousand of open source apps. 2 amongst thousands doesn't make a pattern that supports your arguement. I hope more open source apps reach the critical mass of those 2. I really do, but let's not take 2 fringe cases and make an arguement out of them.

P.S. It's always better to buy support contracts because support is cheap. Not buying support means that 1) you have an internal resource spending their time on something 2) the cost to the business of being down. I'm sorry, but when I buy from a vendor It's their job to know their software and someone who deals with it 100% of the time is likely going to be able to fix the problem faster than someone who spends 20% or less of their time with it.

The problem to that is a matter of perception and money. It's not that there aren't other viable options, it's how people perceive those options. When you talk to a manager in a mid to large size business, every last one of them is aware of VMware, and every last one of them is aware of Hyper-V because MS was so vocal about it. You may see some Fortune 500 guys who are big Sun shops that may talk about OpenBox, but that's not the norm.

So when the higher ups go out for lunch, are they talking about the open source virtual server? Probably not. They're probably talking about VMware or Hyper-V because that's what their friends companies are running.

Also, when was the last time an open source vendor took a higher up to an expensive lunch or on a business trip?

The worst part about corporate IT purchases is that they rarely have anything to do with quality or return on investment. They're usually made on a recomendation of a friend of a higher up, or back room deals. How many times have you seen a CIO go on an expensive all paid "business trip" from a company and all of a sudden you have an exclusive deal with them?

I doubt most people would notice. When people click on something like that and nothing happens, they just assume it can't be fixed, not that the tool itself is broken.

Think of how many times they've run across a fix button that does nothing in antivirus and antispyware software. People just shrug their shoulders and go on.

Mind you, not a good attitude to have but people have it anyways.