[AnimalMuppet]

> Microsoft gave small users everywhere a free license to use the best GUI OS in the world. Not to mention the browser and the productivity tools

> It has always been a free software , unless you are really dedicated and want to pay for it.

The only way I can see for this claim to have any connection to reality is if you are talking about piracy. Yes, Microsoft kind of turned a blind eye to pirates if they stayed small-scale enough. Yes, it was still illegal, and you were still (at least theoretically) running the risk of legal trouble.

If you weren't talking about piracy, then you are simply wrong. Microsoft was never free. (You may have been paying it bundled into the price of a new computer, but it wasn't free.) This goes all the way back to the beginning - see Bill Gates' letter to the hobbyists who were taking a "free license" to MicroSoft BASIC back in the 1970s.