Excellent perspective

It was good of you to point out that the winner gets to write the history. Business success is a combination of 1) technical expertise, 2) business acumen, and 3) luck. Actually, any two of the three is usually sufficient. Microsoft wasn't so brilliantly run, it just happened to be the survivor.

Second, I think you underestimate the acrimony towards Microsoft. Buggy software, licensing difficulties, "security" that protects Microsoft from users rather than users from hackers, predatory business practices, and decreasingly acceptable licensing agreements all contribute. One factor that led to the downfall of IBM was their "if we build it, they will buy it" attitude, and Microsoft is certainly headed there. I see a big opportunity for Free and Open Source Software here.

Third, I don't necessarily agree that people move to new products to avail themselves of the most modern standards. That is the Microsoft model, for sure, with ever changing (and sometimes secret) standards and little attention to backward compatibility. I would hope that OSI diminishes this and like the fact that some major consumers are now imposing OSI standards onto software providers. To finish the thought, I think a lot of people move to new technologies out of blind faith that newer must be better, and this is particularly true of those that have less technical expertise.