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No, not JUST IT
But the ease of achieving lock-in is much higher with IT than in many other areas of business.
For instance a restaurant-goer isn't locked into any particular restaurant. Ford is not generally locked in to any particular parts supplier.
That other areas of business want to achieve lock-in is natural. When Coke is in a position to nail a restaurant that sold Pepsi as Coke, they force them to only sell soft-drinks from Coca-Cola. Nice profit opportunity there. Your airline is trying to do the same with a frequent-flyer program.
And when you get to other technology businesses, the same dynamics that drive it in IT are at work.
However software is special. Software lock-in tends to be harder to avoid, and other business factors (such as significant per unit manufacturing costs) are missing, making management of lock-in a more significant dynamic than otherwise.
As for your snide comment about Microsoft, I'd hope you would give me more credit than that. Or did you think that I didn't know that Microsoft learned directly from IBM?
Cheers,
Ben
To deny the indirect purchaser, who in this case is the ultimate purchaser, the right to seek relief from unlawful conduct, would essentially remove the word consumer from the Consumer Protection Act
- [link|http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?NewsID=1246&Page=1&pagePos=20|Nebraska Supreme Court]