You could be right, but my likewise fuzzy recollection was that the contract that OEMs had with MS said that every PC that was sold had to have an OS on it. Because the implication was that a PC sold without an OS was likely to have a pirated version of windows installed by an end user. The contract didn't say that it had to have a Microsoft OS because they were a little leery of anti-trust accusations at the time. Very few OEMs used the FreeDOS loophole because they would go out of business if MS decided to pull the OEM contract.