Perhaps if MS had only 5% of the market share, they'd be scared straight and try to produce worthwhile programs for people to buy
. Just a thought.
You're right, people aren't
forced to use Winders, but let me tell you a little story. Way back when, in the Dirty Days Of DOS, people discovered that they could copy programs from disk to disk. This wasn't a huge revelation, and there was really no way to stop it either. Back then, there were no product keys and no product activation to stand in your way. So, people borrowed MS DOS from their friends and copied it onto their computer. Then a few years later, Windows came out, in all its glory **chokes on own sarcasm**. So, these people that borrowed DOS a few years ago, if they had the system resources, decided to borrow Windows from a friend. This continued on until these users couldn't use their old 386's any more and decided to get a shiny, new computer. They toddled off to the computer store and low and behold, what did they buy? A Windows based PC. Why? Because that's what they were used to.
The moral of the story: People aren't forced to use Windows, but, MS would be dead in the water if it wasn't for Piracy. People won't pay MS' retail price for their software, but they will steal it, and they will accept it bundled from the OEM.