Although originally associated with IBM, from the 1990s on the term became most often associated with software industry giant Microsoft. Roger Irwin said:[10]
“ Microsoft soon picked up the art of FUD from IBM, and throughout the '80s used FUD as a primary marketing tool, much as IBM had in the previous decade. They ended up out FUD-ding IBM themselves during the OS/2 vs Win3.1 years. ”
In 1996, Caldera, Inc. accused Microsoft of several anti-competitive practises, including issuing vaporware announcements, creating FUD, and excluding competitors from participating in beta-test programs in order to destroy competition in the DOS market.[11][12] One of the claims was related to having modified Windows 3.1 so that it would not run on DR DOS 6.0 although there were no technical reasons for it not to work.[11][13] This was caused by the so called AARD code, some encrypted piece of code, which had been found in a number of Microsoft programs. The code would fake nonsensical error messages if run on DR DOS, like:[14][15]
“ Non-Fatal error detected: error #2726
Please contact Windows 3.1 beta support
Press ENTER to exit or C to continue[14][15] ”
If the user chose to press C, Windows would continue to run on DR DOS without problems. While it had been already speculated in the industry that the purpose of this code was to create doubts about DR DOS' compatibility and thereby destroy the product's reputation,[14][15] internal Microsoft memos published as part of the United States v. Microsoft antitrust case later revealed that the specific focus of these tests was in fact DR DOS:[16] At one point, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates sent a memo to a number of employees, reading
“ You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app would do that would make it run with MSDOS and not run with DR-DOS. Is there feature [sic] they have that might get in our way?[11][17] ”
Microsoft Senior Vice President Brad Silverberg later sent another memo, stating:
“ What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS.[11][17] ”
In 2000, Microsoft settled the lawsuit out-of-court for an undisclosed sum, which in 2009 was revealed to be $280m.[18]
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