A History of Information Technology and Written Communication.
Page generated: Saturday 4-09-2010 5:56pm
Page generated: Saturday 4-09-2010 5:56pm
Microsoft had purchased a licence to use Spyglass' Mosaic browser, under an arrangement which gave Spyglass a quarterly fee, plus a percentage of Microsoft's revenues from sales of the software. (Spyglass Mosaic was licenced from NCSA, but also shared no code with NCSA Mosaic.)
A renamed and modified version of the Spyglass Mosaic browser, Internet Explorer was given away for free as part of Microsoft Plus!, with development costs funded by Microsoft's revenues from other areas of the company. The fact that IE was given away for free meant that only the minimal quarterly fee was owed to Spyglass, and also making it virtually impossible for Spyglass to sell any further licences for the same software. Spyglass sued for deception and eventually won a $521 million settlement.