a) Microsoft, then a tiny fraction of what it is now, took $400 million from IBM in co-developing OS/2 and put the profit from that money into Windows 3.0 and later NT (funny how developing NT cost only a stated $150 million just a few years later and the main cost is in software developers)
b) When Windows 3.0 did well enough in the market, MS did what they have always done - they figured out how to break their agreement with IBM, and take their own stuff that they owned 100% and run with it. This is a pattern seen everywhere at all times with MS, ever since the Ed Roberts / MS BASIC days in Albuquerque.
What actually happened is that:
a) Microsoft, then a tiny fraction of what it is now, took $400 million from IBM in co-developing OS/2 and put the profit from that money into Windows 3.0 and later NT (funny how developing NT cost only a stated $150 million just a few years later and the main cost is in software developers)
b) When Windows 3.0 did well enough in the market, MS did what they have always done - they figured out how to break their agreement with IBM, and take their own stuff that they owned 100% and run with it. This is a pattern seen everywhere at all times with MS, ever since the Ed Roberts / MS BASIC days in Albuquerque.