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Caldera and Microsoft Settle Lawsuit
Hallow writes "While terms of the agreement remain confidential, according to a C:Net story, Caldera and Microsoft have settled out of court with Microsoft making a one-time only payment of about $150 million USD. This is much lower than the 1.6 billion in damages Caldera was seeking." Well, yes. Personally, I don't think Microsoft likes their chances in court these days.
Sounds like you are bitter. Whats your problem with Corel?
For their commanding market presence?
With the $150M maybe they can buy WordPerfect from Corel. It's only fourth-hand software, and not completely tired and shopworn yet.
Microsoft's 150 million "investment" in Apple has roughly doubled due to the rise of Apple's stock price over the last year.
See how that works...MS investment in Apple pays for the Caldera settlement...Classic!
This shows that Windows is bad for your health and Microsoft is guilty.
The reason your post is so funny is because it was a troll, and a very good one.
You sound very emotional over this, but the actuall facts here don't seem to justify it.
You make it sound like Caldera was blackmailing Microsoft just because the company is on rocky legal ground now, but really this suit pre dates that decision.
In reality Microsoft put itself in its current position. For years the company was very aggressive in attempting to put other companies out of business. Personally I think there's nothing wrong with that. They beat the competition.
But saying that they have some moral high ground is just not correct. For years Microsoft used every tactic they could to win and now that someone challenges these actions in court you have a problem?
As for $150 million. Be serious. Any competent lawyer would tell his client this is a good deal. Once it goes to a jury they might really give Caldera the whole kit and kibbodle.
Sometimes you have to stand up for principle. But not when you don't have the moral high-ground. Despite your personal offense at this there is a good chance a jury would not see things the same way you do.
BTW, if it did go to jury and the case was lost it would mean that this wasn't just "Blackmail"
but that Caldera was right. We will never know.
It seams that there are two main kinds of Slashdot postings: a) anti-Microsoft and b) pro-Linux.
Some poor souls really think that being one thing is a synonymous of being the other, but that is not true. Major commercial Linux vendors don't want to defeat MS, they want to take it's position or at least a part of it's marker share. They want to be Microsoft.
This is not about free software, it is about the money.
WHICH ONE OF YOU FUCKING STUPID BUTTFUCKS MARKED THIS AS A TROLL ?????? JESUS H FUCKING CHRIST, GET A FUCKING CLUE !!!!!
I'm no fan of MS, but just because someone posts soemthing that defends MS, that doesn't make it automatically a fucking troll.
CAN YOU FUCKING READ...CAN YOU FUCKING COMPREHEND .
MODERATORS ON SLASHDOT FUCKING SUCK. YOU SUCK
Uh...no. Not even close. Microsoft invested more like $450 million to save Apple from extinction. Not altruism mind you; Microsoft is the largest application vendor for Macintosh computers. That investment isn't quite a single year's revenue in Apple versions of Microsoft Office. FYI...Microsoft won the legal battles with Apple.
Before you qoute history, Make sure you have it right. For the real story of DOS, read Peter Norton's Inside the PC (sixth ed) which explains the truth and not the blatant M$ bashing you do
that makes me mad..only 150 million.
Maybe Win 3.1 ran slower on DR DOS because DR DOS wasn't a particularly good OS. The main reason Caldera bought was for the lawsuit fodder. Left on its own, it would have tanked.
I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. The guy may be completely wrong, but that doesn't make him a troll. Not only that, but just the fact that he generated a rather lengthy and interesting discussion tells you that at the very least it's worth reading the responses. It should be at least a troll. Someone please set this right.
YEP...I have to agree with you. I don't agree with everything that you said, but it is certainly not flambait or a troll. Now... I will show you both flambait and trolling...
WHICH ONE OF YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKING IDIOT MODERATORS DOESN'T HAVE A MOTHERFUCKING CLUE ?
WHY NOT POST AS AN AC AND DEFEND YOURSELF YOU FUCKING MORON. THAT POST WAS NOT A TROLL AND IT WAS NOT FLAMEBAIT.
HEY DIPSHIT MODERATOR, PULL YOUR FUCKING HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS YOU STUPID FUCKING PATHTIC FOOL
My God:
Moderation Totals:Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Insightful=1, Total=4
This proves that 3 moderators in 4 are truly idiotic. This post will go down in history as the #1 example of Microsoft supporters getting automatically moderated down as flaimbait and troll. The poster's points are valid and warrant discussion. I hope and pray that I see one of these moderations on m2.
God, the moderators are biased. How do you justify calling this a "troll." A troll is someone who says:
"Caldera sux! M$ r00lz!" You Linux people can just suck it!!!
Now compare that to this post and tell me which one is a troll.
BTW, I'm seriously curious to have the moderator who moderated this down explain himself. This is ridiculous.
For fuck's sake. Who exactly is the moderator here? I've seen some good comment I don't agree with but there not offtopic and not flambait. Obviously these guys need to get a bit more and maybe get laid.
He's a criminal. He was found to be involved in criminal activities. Cracking is illegal. Therefore he is a criminal. Which bit don't you understand?
Sorry pal, but the 'suits' aren't going to eat jack shit. The 'suits' have an amazing lack of understanding of technology and the spirit of the era that CREATED the whole industry they exploit.
The nice thing about the open source movement and the FSF is it returns the power to the programmers, to the hobbyists that CREATED THE INDUSTRY THE SUITS EXPLOIT.
You like your job at Microsoft? Good for you. It's tough to find a job that you actually like going to every day. If you like serving Bill Gates and his megalomaniacal phantasms, have fun! Live it up! The ride doesn't last forever...be sure to examine the smoking wreck of Netscape to catch a fragment of Microsoft's inevitable future. And before you boast, Netscape did themselves in. Remember that IBM inflated themselves to the point where they couldn't move under their own weight..Microsoft would do well to remember that.
You might rage over this little dialog box, but you're missing the evil hiding underneath it. Microsoft CRIPPLED DrDos! What the hell is an 'error' doing where none should exist? There's no reason for this so-called 'non fatal error' other than to give DRDOS a black eye. Why was the code that generated this 'harmless' little error hidden and ENCRYPTED?
I feel sorry for you if you can't see WHY this is a bad thing, I really do.
What so you can look like an ugly spotty little spud?
caldera did not develop DR DOS - they bought the thing from Novell via Digital esearch. does anyone know how much they paid Novell for it?
Kevin is being released from prison in 10 fucking days. You realize that Mumia is pending execution.
DR-DOS is not 32-bit you dipshit. It's no more 32-bit than MS-DOS. Besides, even if it were somehow a 32-bit DOS (an impossible thing) what value would that give you running Win9x?
I'm not sure how anyone can accuse Caldera of thuggish behaviour. DR was essentially sent under by the supposed "incompatibilities" between DRDOS and Windows 3.1, which regardless of what any error dialog says MS played up very heavily at the time. This lawsuit is much older than any of the other cases outstanding against Microsoft. Its based on a long standing disagreement, and is not just opportunism based on the anti-trust case.
Caldera was once (and may still be) much more closely connected to the original DR than it appears to be from a cursory examination. When Novell came to the decision to scrap their DOS products (after they acquired DR) it was members of the DOS development team who apprached Ray Norda and persuaded him to set up Caldera, which at the time was just a vehicle for this lawsuit. As I understand it is was felt that Novell could not afford to sue Microsoft, so rights to the product were sold to the new company, which did, IIRC continue to develop it at least for a while.
This is indeed illegal, but I've yet to hear a compelling economic justification for it. It is all but impossible to profit using this method Simple, once the competitor is removed, you can charge what you like and do what you like. It wouldn't be illegal if it wasn't a well-established monopoly practise. I choose Linux as my operating system, but it's very difficult to buy a PC with Linux pre-installed, therefore, unless I build my own, I am required to pay for a product I don't want. There hasn't been a choice in the PC OS market for a very long time due to the strong-arm tactics of a monopolist corporation.
I wish I could be like Kevin. I'd give anything... well, almost
To know how much Microsoft has already written off and thus concealed that they'd already planned to spend that Caldera's also going to get; and to know about patent accesses, licenses, trades, and swaps; and to know about disclosures of code, schedules, future plans; and ...
who died and made you God?
But at least it's the only real OS, according to the DOJ.
Caldera has the dimmest future of all of the major linux vendors. It had better spend the $150 million wisely.
Do you know where yo' booty is?
No.
This is disturbing, to see Caldera sell-out like this. The DR-DOS event was a very good example of Microsoft crushing competition through their monopoly and therefore causing the consumer to pay. Anyhow, I'm disappointed in Caldera selling out. Then again, they make OpenLinux, a lackluster distro... so what can you expect... all they wanted was money and that's what they got. They didn't care about the moral point of this case, which was microsoft's monopoly. Dammit... I hate to see Microsoft get off with nothing but a slap on the wrist. What the hell is 150 Million to them? Pocket change. Thing of how much they took away from DR-DOS and how much they made off crushing it... Sigh.
do you guys often eat lunch together at work?
Yeah, while we're at it, how about we release all the other petty criminals out there?
I hope they take a hot iron to his nuts while they're at it.
seems everyone seems to be asking "what does this mean for..... " This means nothing. There is no legal precedent set by a settlement, this will not weaken m$'s position in other lawsuits.
Well even if Caldera won the suit in court, the Judge has some say in just what the damages can be. I mean, I can sue someone with just reason but if I name an unjust price then I'll probably end up winning the suit and getting a more just sum. So the odds of netting a few thousand thousand thousand was slim to nil.
>>4. We helped to brand Linux as a legitimate competitor to Windows.
Whoops, I guess Microsoft REALLY won then. I guess they can't be a monopoly if Linux is a legitimate competitor.
Hmm, Caldera is a Utah based software company. Orrin Hatch, anti-MSFT senator extraordinaire, also hails from Utah. How much of this $150M do you think the upstanding senator will receive in the form of meat trays, crackwhores, etc... "soft money" ... "microsoft money" ... it's kind of funny ... hey, that rhymes! Signed, Anonymous Devil's Advocate
>>I have friends who lost a chance to start a company, and I lost a job, because the Venture Capitalists said it was too good an idea: as soon as it got big enough for M$ to notice, they'd make an unrefuseable offer, and the investors wouldn't get their money back.
Ha ha, please explain how you would accept a "unrefuseable offer" and the VC wouldn't get their money back? Wouldn't the VC's just refuse the offer (oh yes, they can do that)?
What a dork.
MS wants to own 100% of the market. Therefore they want to discourage competition.
EXPLAIN WHY THAT IS BAD.
Very good point. Linux is elitism at its worst.
>(anyone used Stacker lately?) I'm afraid Stacked suffered from something else, namely HD space getting extremely cheap, so that their product was no long desirable, rather than any malice from Microsoft. With 20 GB drives available for under 200$, who needs to play games with compression?
It's alright, the thread just showed up in M2. Twice ;)
;)
Something tells me that whoever moderated that post down isn't gonna moderate any time soon
This is rediculous. MS deserves to be milked much more than that for what they have done.
He's not a petty criminal, he's a genius.
moderate up, please. Sounds like a good history of the subject.
Linux is just a rip-off of Unix...
MS introduced ENCRYPTED code that SPECIFICALLY tested for DR-DOS and generated an error message if DR-DOS was found.
Now, testing to make sure the underlying OS to ensure compatibility is one thing.
But why was this encrypted, then?
And the workaround was easy. Just sys your disk with MSDOS and it would work.
The "compatibility checking" argument is bogus because of the limited "checking" that was done.
MS would have lost this case.
I'm just wondering how much Caldera actually got. MS wouldn't have to announce the entire payoff in cents/share. Or even any of it. Or could announce more that the settlement.
Imagine if there were an oil monopoly, let's call it "MicroStandard Oil", and one of the car companies, say "Dodge-ital Research", decided to make a car that was so fuel efficient that it would need less of MS Oil's gasoline.
MS Oil is unhappy with this, so they send out a press release claiming that Dodge-ital automobiles will catch fire when used with their gasoline.
In fact, they then modify the gasoline so that it does cause Dodge-itals to catch fire.
Is that what they call "Freedom to Innovate"?
Live it up while you can, guys. The suits will eat you sooner or later.
hey look, guys. a warning from a microsoft guy. ooooh, we're scared.
Sad, but true. It is also sad that the docs and findings wont be put into the public record. Caldera sold out on a chance of a life time.
For a few coins Caldera has wasted its best hope to nail Micro$oft.
this is a troll? this is better than everything posted in this joint.
I hate to tell you this, but Win 3.1 ran fine (barring bugs in DR-Dos) on both DR-DOS 5, 6 and 7. In fact, part of Caldera's assertion was that MS attempted to give a phony error message in a beta version of Windows 3.1, but removed the message in the final version.
So, either you'e lying or there was some other problem.
what did Caldera pay for DR DOS?
the $150 million will come out of Ballmer's pate-shining budget.
What possible reason would you have for doing this?
Whatever you might think of my company, I love the work I do. It gets more exciting every year, and I know that Office, where I work, produces the highest quality productivity software in the world, bar none
if you're so confident, why do you hide your code? you guys are busy obsoleting yourselves.
have fun while you can. the anti-suits will eat you soon...very soon.
Held accountable for what? Not doing anything wrong??
Caldera accepted it because they knew they had no case. MS paid out because they're already in court with the DOJ and don't want to fight a two front war.
As a dealer in Australia, I have to delete all MS /wipe hard drives - not even command .com - unless I have a 'certificate' pack . Someone tell me if true. This has driven the price of 'old certificate packs' from 10 cents to ten dollars. Would like to see the settlement licence old DRDOS users to MSDOS free/legally . Oh- secondhand flea market traders dont matter heh? Go class actions. PPS 150 mil seems very low, and if we say 8% of the DOS market over 3 years back then, plus 1% of all future dos sales - I think very low. Ongoing royalalties /percentages should have been pursued.
only script kiddies think he doesn't deserve to rot in jail. script kiddies don't matter.
If Windows didn't run on Dr. DOS, that's not Microsoft's fault. Maybe you should have used OS/2 or something.
Wouldn't that be the "cause" of most law suits? If they were 'damaged' by lost sales, then this damage should be repaid. IANAL, though.
It's not that Windows wouldn't work with Caldera's DR-DOS. From what I have read, windows does work with DR-DOS, but the suit alleges that Microsoft purposely added code to detect DR-DOS, and tell users that they had to have MS-DOS when they didn't really have to.
I seem to remember that Caldera's law firm took the case on contingency payment (if that is the right term.) Thus I would expect them to take $75 million of that $150 million easily since the law firm is taking some of the risk!
If there is a logical reason to this undervalued settlement, it would be a planned merger. Maybe after the settlement, M$ buys the company formerly known as Caldera, and releases something called M$ Linux, and once again force every user to pay the software tax to the company. Plain and simple.
If you're going to go the c4 route,
PLEASE dont waste your time randomly hitting a
tiny percentage of the microsoft "campus".
lurk by the gate, and hit the root of the evil
when it departs for its coffin.
hi microsoft shill !!!
Um, isn't it really 1/10th or what was asked for? I don't think M$ has anything in the trillions, yet. Unless they get the IRS franchise they're looking into....
I'm not familiar with the details of the case, I wish you had put that at the top so I could have saved the trouble of reading your comment...
hey look, people. one of the 500 microsoft trolls !!!
and just think, there are hundred of these guys running around slashdot.
Genuis without morals = psychopath.
The DOJ is waiting for the dust to settle. They will wait and see how many damage points Microsoft has left after being sued.
When the suing subsides, the DOJ will have a strategy laid out for finishing off Microsoft.
Did it need to be? It was in the versions that reached the magazine reviewers. Hence, in all magazine reviews it said 'Oh, DR-DOS users might want to stay away from this product.' All it takes is bad press to kill a product. MS has shown how controlling the press can lead to their own gains and competitors losses.
Hi cumlicking faggot!
QDOS was a ground up rewrite based upon the manuals for CP/M just as Linux is a ground up rewrite of "Unix" based on the POSIX standards. It was questionable at the time QDOS was written as to if the look and feel of CP/M was Digital Research's property along with CP/M. However, by the time that Caldera took the case to court the issue of look and feel had already played out in the Lotus vs. Borland case where Lotus sued Borland for having stolden the 1-2-3 spreadsheet look and feel. The courts sided with Borland that companies can not claim ownership of the look and feel, only the copyright of the implimentation itself. Just like Borland's Quattro Pro spreadsheet, QDOS does not take any code, only the look and feel, from any other product. Hence, Caldera would not have gotten very far attacking MS in court for the cloning of CP/M.
I hate to go karma whoring here, but how is my post flamebait? With the possible exception of calling Caldera "vultures," I don't see anything in my post that's the least bit inflamatory.
/. community. I've seen posts several times as inflamatory as this one marked up to 3 for being "insightful." Yet I post a relatively tame defense of Microsoft, and I'm guilty of flamebaiting. Believing that Microsoft is innocent is not such a shocking opinion to justify censorship.
Everything in the post is level-headed and backed up with arguments. Moderators, please try to keep straight the difference between expressing an unpopular opinion and expressing an opinion in an inflamatory manner. The fact that you disagree with my post doesn't make it flamebait.
I think this points to a general bias in the
Probably a good idea considering the 2,000 trolls that unfortunitly have begun to represent the entire Linux community in showing that any Anti-MS talk is considered good, FUD or not.
The last time a betrayal of this magnitude occurred was 2000 years ago when Judas sold Jesus down the river for 30 pieces.
So this was what it was all about. 150 million dollars. Ahab chasing Moby Dick, only to withdraw meekly at the last moment when the White Whale offered to make it worth his while.
Caldera, I always knew that you were out to make money. I did not realize that that was your only objective, or that you would do anything for money. You had a chance to make a difference. M$ has never been so vulnerable, both legally and in the public eye. You had the chance to hit it hard where it hurt the most. You might have lost, but you could have entered the various pieces of evidence you had into public record and forced an awareness of M$'s business practices. You took their dirty money and slid out. You make me sick.
From now on, you and I are enemies. I shall do everything in my power, use whatever influence I have on the world around me, to frustrate and thwart you at every turn. I shall make it my business to ensure that your version of Linux is never used by me, my friends, or any corporate setting I have control over.
Have fun with your 30 pieces. While they last.
over 100 million people computers in the US use DOS. They just call it windows 95 or windows 98.
In some sense, (take this whatever way you like), Caldera was a 'sue Microsoft' spinoff from Novell, with Ray Noorda (ex. Novell head honcho who had a vendetta/blood-hunt to pursue) at the Helm.
John
John_Chalisque
The issue as I see it is whether Microsoft *purposefully broke* compatibility with a competing product. Companies don't do that all the time, mostly it's just Microsoft. By claiming that MS-DOS & MS Windows (now '95/'98) were one product, and bundling them together, Microsoft ruined the market for other DOS variants, and their competing applications. (anyone used Stacker lately?)
:)
And, MS-DOS was a monopoly back then. And it was bundled with the computers back then too. And Microsoft leveraged that to maintain their market dominance. That, and the fact that IBM can't market themselves out of a paper bag, and Apple immediately crushes all good ideas that involve playing well with others. Microsoft is more subtle, and more evil. Never trust people who smile like that...
I've used OpenDOS (now DR-DOS again?) before, and it's pretty similar, really. Just another DOS. Some things still work better with MS-DOS, but with a little tweaking, OpenDOS works just as well. *And* it had a command-line multitasker!
Sure, it only multitasked as well as Windows 3.1, but that's a feature I would have *loved* to have had, back in the day. Heck, I wish Windows had that feature today, to transparently switch from text console to text console. That's just one of the many reasons why I'm running Linux now, instead.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Microsoft's Windows monopoly status isn't at issue here. However, they did have a monopoly on the DOS market of the time, and it was DR-DOS that Microsoft was trying to kill (a competitor) using their monopoly power.
Life's a lot like money-- you spend it, then it's gone. Spend wisely.
From the Lineo website:
"In the summer of 1998, Caldera, Inc. created two separate companies to further focus the
development, marketing and sales efforts of the company's two divisions: Caldera
Systems, Inc. addressed its "Linux for Business" target, while Caldera Thin Clients, Inc.
addressed the thin client embedded systems market.
At present, Caldera Systems sells Linux-based products in various markets, with greatest
profitability in the desktop and server market segments. Ransom Love, former VP of
Marketing for Caldera Inc., is the current president and CEO of Caldera Systems, Inc.
www.calderasystems.com
In July 1999, Caldera Thin Clients changed its name to Lineo, Inc."
I don't get the impression that Caldera Systems bought its way out of Caldera - since the company was privately held I have a hard time believing the parent company would do such a strategically-silly move.
-Stu
well, this morining, CNN (AOLTimeWarner) stated that sources said that the figure was around $275M.
Now, why would CNN (AOLTimeWarner) want to make Microsoft look bad by inflating that figure?
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I've posted comments about the company I work for. And when I identify myself as an employee of that company, I don't blow my cover, I go "AC".
/..
I'll be damned if I'm going to put my career at risk for your informance. I'm happy to pass on relevant stuff that the "/. community" would be interested in, even when that could be considered a firing offense, or even an SEC violation. But despite the job market being nice for us techies and all, I'm not going to jeopardize my way of life and the support of my family just so you can be safe and secure about the source of the information. Trust it from an AC, or moderate it down. Your choice.
But when I'm Jafac, I don't want anyone knowing who I work for. Many of my coworkers also read
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The irony here (that M$ paid off Apple $150M plus an undisclosed sum thought to be in the $300-$500M range, and paid off Caldera, and others - etc.) is that even with all these legal problems, and defeats, Microsoft is still about the most profitable business in the history of business.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
well, let's see now. When M$ invested in Apple, it was at like $12/shr. Right? $150M/12=12.5 million shares.
APPL is now @~$95/shr. So M$ has made about $83/shr profit.
So that "Apple" fund at M$ is now worth about $1.0375 Billion.
I think they can spare some.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Yeah, but that model is oversimplified when MegaCorp has it's hands in many diverse businesses (such as chipsets and motherboards, which is the lever Intel is applying to AMD lately).
And also, this does not at all apply to software, where companies like Microsoft can give away IE free, because it costs nothing to produce another copy of IE. The fixed development cost is paid from OEM revenues from Win95. Netscape didn't have a cash-cow like Windows95. They had their internet server and their portal.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"Funny, I don't see them complaining. Their founders are now wealthy, and their product will soon be integrated into
AOL."
Are you kidding? THey're all but dead. They couldn't survive against Microsoft on their own, they had to be bailed out by AOL. And as for Navigator being integrated into AOL, don't hold your breath, cause it'll make you blue.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
One of the things that Caldera sought was access to MS APIs for a period of 10 years. If the $0.03 per share / $150M figure seems too low, perhaps it's because there were non-monetary components in the settlement, e.g., API disclosure, software or patent licensing, non-compete agreements, etc. Who knows, maybe Lineo picked up the rights to CE or something (ouch!).
It would be interesting if Caldera got the 10-year API disclosure originally sought; that could lead to some significant improvements in Willows Twin, WINE, and/or some proprietary equivalent (WABI revival?).
I was looking forward to the trial and all the other lawsuits it would spawn if Caldera won. I guess Caldera decided that a sure $150 mil is better than a trial where M$ might be able to weasel out of by getting a jury that could be duped.
After legal fees, I wonder how much will go to linux development?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Konstant has mentioned his employer in the past. He contributed to a thread that I started last summer.
For the record, since you seem to be so damn picky about employment, I too worked for MS last summer as an intern. Hell, I'll even put it in my user info. Karma is something I can live without.
The point is, nobody here acts as a mouthpiece for Microsoft or any other company; most companies wouldn't stoop so low to troll on slashdot. Stop your delusions that this site is more important than it really is. People speak their mind here; some people tend to agree with MS, and that's the way it is.
I think that it is a great shame that this important case has been settled rather than aired. Microsoft is getting way with something that should not be brushed under the carpet. If Caldera had carried through, the message that a judgement would have sent through commerce would have been fantastic. 150m is paltry compared with the damage that M$'s business practices have caused. M$ have made billions out of this sort of abuse and dropping the odd 150m back hander still makes it worth the risk to do it again.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Thats all i know about it. I know this because back in the day I would run DR-DOS 6.0. Untill I had to run Windows 3.1. Windows would start but soon crashed with some funky error (cant remember what..but it may have been runtime) at random times. Someone told me that Windows would not run on anything BUT MS-DOS, so like a good sheep i went out and payed for MS-DOS. After that windows ran fine.
I have to return some videotapes...
They "upgraded" some of the win32 clients at my work from win95 to 98. This broke SAMBA on the linux servers because MS changed the protocall just a little. Oops. The SAMBA team had a fix before we even knew what the problem was.
I have to return some videotapes...
Long live Janet Reno! :)
I have to return some videotapes...
386SX16 with 4 megs RAM,IDE HD, trident VGA ISA card, NO sound card, rs232 mouse.
I wiped the HD, installed DR-DOS then Windows 3.1 off a set of floppys that where brought when windows 3.1 first came out..NOT a beta version. Windows would start but crapped out at random times. EVEN before I installed any apps. I was told by some other people who had the same problem that the only fix was to get MS-DOS. I bent over and took it, i bought MS-DOS version 6, formated the drive, and installed DOS then Windows 3.1. After that Windows ran fine.
I have to return some videotapes...
Not even close! Apple had two billion dollars in the bank at the time of Microsoft's "investment". The facts are that Microsoft (wittingly or unwittingly) used Apple-copyrighted code in Video For Windows, and was caught at it. The "Investment" was worked out as a face-saving measure with Steve Jobs. Also part of the deal was the continuation of development of MS-Office for Mac-OS. Microsoft was issued non-voting, non-preferred shares as I recall. As this class of share is not publically traded, its present value can only be a conjecture...
Dog is my co-pilot.
it's the year 2000 and people are still using DOS junk? Please. DOS isn't worth the tons of money that Caldera was asking for. Nevertheless it's still a product that makes money for Caldera and MS dumped on it so it's good that Caldera got the 150 million
---
A lot of good points, hope you get moderated up.
If I remember correctly, the definition of ex post facto has to do with the enforcement of newly written laws, not with enforcing existing laws. If the US were to outlaw chewing gum, and proceed to round up all the people known to have chewed gum in the last year, this would be an example of ex post facto.
If on the other hand, the US had already outlawed chewing gum, but waited 5 years after the law was passed to start enforcing it, this would not be ex post facto. It could be argued that the lack of enforcement gave people the implicit approval to chew gum, and the evidence might not stay "fresh", but I don't think it would be unconstitutional.
IANAL SDA
I am not a lawer, standard disclaimers apply
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
The online version of MSDN was accessible with Netscape not too long ago (sorry, no proof, but I have seen it with my own eyes), but now it returns a Java error.
What about creating proprietory "HTTPMail" protocols just to make Hotmail accessible only from Outlook Express?
What about the new MSTelnet(TM) incompatibilities in NT5 (aka Win2000)? (They have embraced yet another protocol, and the NT5 Telnet server can only be accessed with the NT5 Telnet client, AFAICU.)
I think that every Slashdot reader can come up with at least one more story...
--
>I'll wait for further verification.
Hokay, I saw Caldera's press release at www.drdos.com. I admit this is for real.
For shame.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Poor little sheep. 150 mil is biotch change to the Great Borg Complex. Caldera has basiclay been given pocket change by Gates.
"Heres some money, go play in traffic"
Thats the message Billy Borg has given the industry today. So far no actions have touched MS that money could not fix.
Face it folks, MS has the cashito to win this war. If your going to win you better start driving your SUVs into the Redmond campus with a few pounds of c4 strapped to your IBooks yelling "For The Love of the LInux Jihad"
PLay witht he winners, cry with the loosers, step aside for the real deal.... Can you smell what the borg is cooking?
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Actually, I think that this case was about "illegally obtaining a monopoly" rather than "illegally maintaining a monopoly".
/.
Read the article that is linked to from the just-previous caldera article on
Liberty uber alles.
it gets funnier and funnier--now you're objecting to "the principle of the thing". I have long maintained that _it doesn't matter_ whether what MS has done is illegal--it is clear that their practices have been unprinipled and resoundingly negative for both consumers and the industry. the last person that should be claiming principle is MS. Do you really think that they would have settled if they were innocent of wrongdoing? They clearly have the money to prove themselves right, if they were (maybe they would have needed another legal team, though...)
it's nice to hear you enjoy your work, though. It woud be even worse if what makes the rest of us miserable was making the people that made it miserable, too.
Liberty uber alles.
Moderation is really getting out of hand. Where would that post be more on topic?
All large companies that have a product that no one else makes, does the same thing. And they are also sued under anti-trust law, just like Microsoft was.
That's my point. In 1991, there were at least two companies that produced competing products, probably more. Apple and OS/2 were both viable competitors, and probably NeXT as well. And there are lots of companies that do this sort of thing and don't get sued. Pepsi and Pizza Hut are both owned by the same company, and the only drinks you can buy at Pizza Hut are made by Pepsi.
Second, it is wrong to do something just because it destroys competition.
I think you are drawing a meaningless distiction. All companies try to destroy their compeition. That's how competition works. Coke and Pepsi try to drive each other out of the market constantly. Same with BK and McDonalds. What is the difference between "destroying the competition" and "competing?"
Normally, companies will do this by selling their product at a loss until the competitor is forced out of business.
This is indeed illegal, but I've yet to hear a compelling economic justification for it. It is all but impossible to profit using this method.
However, I soon decide that you are not needed. I can the size of my widget, and tell the company that they either modify their product, or loss the contract. Well, volume of widgets that you produce is not enough to keep them in business, while I can produce enough widgets to meet their need.
Trouble is, there isn't just one customer that has to choose between us. There are hundreds of thousands of customers, and what will happen is that some of them will choose DOS, and some will choose DR-DOS. Your analogy doesn't fit.
And you should have read the fact that this alleged code was never in the release version of Windows, buddy.
But if Windows was not a monopoly, then how is this a violation of antitrust? If Windows didn't have a monopoly, then how is it illegal for them to use that product to promote another one, even if they have a monopoly in the other product? That doesn't make any sense.
Second, Microsoft is a monopoly. Since they own the market for Windows, excluding a competitor would do serious damage to that competior.
That was one of my points: Microsoft may be the clear market leader today, but in 1991 or whenever this actually occurred, that status was still very much in dispute. To retroactively assign Microsoft the status of a monopoly 10 years after the fact is ex post facto law, which is prohibited by the Constitution.
If they were to do the same thing now, you'd at least have antitrust laws on your side. But 10 years ago, I don't see antitrust laws as applicable, since they had not yet consolidated their "monopoly" position.
Both OS2 and Apple were viable competition, and as I said either of them could have beaten Microsoft if they hadn't screwed up so badly. Apple at that time had the undisputed best GUI, and a kick-ass line of machines. If they hadn't charged so much for them, gone after business more forcefully, and not gone off on all kinds of tangents like the Newton project, they would be in a much better position today. Similarly if IBM hadn't been so smug and arrogant about their control of the direction of the PC market, they probably would have done better with OS/2, and it might still be viable today.
So to expect Microsoft to say "Gee, we might be a monopoly 5 years from now, we'd better not engage in anti-competitive practices" is simply not reasonable."
Note that Apple has done things that are at least as bad. Look at the way they killed the clones. They took a thriving market for Mac compatible computers and killed it simply because it was eating into their market share. Apple has a monopoly on Mac-compatible computers. Should Motorolla and Power Computing sue them?
Yeah. Right. I'll believe that when pigs fly. They had desktop OS dominance, they had Win-based office suite dominance, and FUD down ta an art form. Once M$ got the market in anything it never let go.
I'd be interested to see some market share numbers. From what I've read, Windows wasn't a particularly useful product until version 3, and the OS/2 versus Windows war was still going on or just finishing when Windows 3 was released. They may have had a majority of the market, but their market share was not as large as it is now. If they were a monopoly in '91, why did it take the DOJ until '98 to do anything about it, and concerning a case that occured in '96?
If DR-DOS was so weak that pre-release bad publicity can kill it that easily, was it really that great of a program to start with?
The $150M was a purchase by MS of non-voting AAPL stock. The out-of-court settlement for stealing QT code was also "undisclosed", but thought to be several times the $150M.
You got a few things turned around, pardner --
+ IBM approached Microsoft (primarily for BASIC), not the other way around. Microsoft was a CP/M licencee, and referred IBM to Digital Research.
+ Gary Kildall was not willing to meet with IBM, and basically blew them off.
+ MS zoomed in to cut a deal with QDOS.
+ A IBM PC buyer could choose either CP/M-86 or IBM/MS-DOS (or the UCSD Pascal OS). Only problem was CP/M cost $150, and IBM DOS was only $50.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I am really disappointed. I thought that Caldera had a very strong case.
Winning this case could have easily accelerated the end of the Microsoft dominance. Caldera was going to introduce evidence about the real problems Microsoft has caused in the industry. This "bundling the browser" suit that the DOJ used was such a small part of the bigger problem. Caldera's suit was going to be about much more serious violations of their monopoly and how they acquired said monopoly.
Oh well, I am happy for the Caldera folks. I just was hoping to see the Microsoft execs squirm on the stand when they had to start facing the facts.
"The ***love*** of money is the root of all evil"
I owned both DR-DOS 5.0 and 6.0 but ending buying MS-DOS 5.0 anyway as WIN 3.1 would run under either DR-DOS product. Does this settlement now make for CLASS ACTION STATUS on behalf of DR-DOS owners (using the pre-trial discovery documents ?)
>Buster, if you like your work, then you don't >like being creative,
Leave it to an open-sores hippie to blather on about creativity.
I haven't seen anything creative out of the open-sores movement. What I have seen consists mostly of amateurish knock-offs of 5 year old technology.
I have used Linux and don't mind it. The one thing that drives me away from it is the stigma of being associated with the knee-jerk anti-corporate zealots that go about preaching the Gospel according to St. IGNUcious.
Dear God you people are scary freaks!
NW
"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it."
It makes no sense to me either, and I raised precisely this point in an earlier discussion of the Caldera lawsuit. Sadly I can't find this earlier discussion.
The legal answer has something to do with the "statute of limitations", which I don't understand, not being American. But the straight answer is no, it doesn't make sense.
Of Course.. Come on, nobody wants to IPO with a lawsuit over their head, even if they are on what would end out the winning side. ;) Easier to just tuck it under the carpet, pocket the 150m, and move on to greener pastures. ;)
Cool, maybe I'll get to boot Caldera DOS under Win98 now. I believe part of the problem that Caldera had with Win95 was that MS purposely made it impossible to use another bootloader to start win.com...
-------
Hecubas
Are you seriously claiming that Microsoft didn't break under DrDos? A good friend of mine back in '92 spent weeks trying to get Win3.x to install on top of DrDos (v7 I think) and didn't succeed. In the end he needed a 'bug fix' from Dr/Novell/Caldera/whoever to make it work. Even then he had serious problems and eventually had to take the inevitable route of using MS-DOS instead. At the time the line was that Dr needed to lie to Windows, essentially telling Windows that it was MS-DOS not Dr. Once that was done misteriously the major bug disappeared.
I'm not saying that Dr didn't have other, genuine bugs, or that Windows didn't make other checks for the 'correct' version of DOS, but if Microsoft were being genuinely competitive they would have tested Windows on top of BOTH of the major DOS's of the time, MS and Dr. The fact of the matter is that they didn't. This means Microsoft either committed a major sin in putting in code to cause problems when Dr was present, or the slightly lesser sin of simply not checking its product on top of Dr. Either way I think they were in the wrong and deserved to pay for it.
Before you think that I am simply another anti-microsoft geek, let me tell you my position.
I admin Win95, NT w/s, NT svr, AIX and Linux. Of those my favourites to work on are AIX and Linux, simply due to the flexibility. Unix's design philosophy is just so much more versatile and stable than MS's. My idea of a perfect OS would probably use a Unix backend with a Microsoft GUI. Typically MS GUI's are very good, if bloated and inflexible. Unfortunately what most people see is the GUI, never what is behind it. Geeks like us spend a good amount of time working 'behind the scenes' so MS really pisses us off. People are also used to the idea that their workstations WILL crash on a daily basis, it's normal, it's what computers _do_, they simply don't know any better. That historic brainwashing and the continual brainwashing from MS's marketing dept (which is where they REALLY excel (no pun intended)) means people continue to go with the MS product, often unaware that there even is any competition. Win95 is ok for games, crap for anything else, NT is fairly stable if resource hungry, some of the Backoffice applications are a nightmare to work with (Systems Manangement Server anybody, Exchange?). Unix on the other hand is resource frugal, flexible and fast.
Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly.
I think that's a little silly, if DOS was a 16 bit OS as opposed to an 8-bit one, it was probably a little better don't you think?
And what your saying is akin to saying that everything that Linux, has acomplished has been stolen from AT&T
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
do you think he'll ignore Caldera's evidence
What evidence?
Nothing was proven Caldera made accusations which are basically meaningless without a conviction, legally I think it would be just barely better then hear-say(sp?). On cross they could always incriminate the evidence by saying that hey "You really didn't have much of a case that is why you settled for so little of what you where asking, isn't that corret" Caldera really can't answer the question since it is sealed. So basically the so called evidence is really pretty useless.
and it seems that desire for money got Caldera in this case. I wish they'd have gone ahead with the case because they need to, for DR-DOS, for Netscape, for Linux, for all of us out here who don't like what Microsoft's doing. They are, as far as I know (and my scope of knowledge isn't much wider than a pinhead), they're the first "big"/significant case against Microsoft (I mean, court case kind of thing) and for them to give up so readily to such a small amount of money suggests, as all have said, that Microsoft can now get away with their junk, and that posing a case against them doesn't work. We need(ed) someone to forge onward and drag them into a bloody (or not, preferably) war in court with a full court decision, etc. A large corporation would be good for this because they'd have the money for the legal team, etc.. and here was Caldera. They failed us. Darnnit!
Insert mind here.
No, this code never made it to the end user.
If this was true, then that would be fine. It's not.
The code was in the beta product, and the beta product was shipped to corporate customers as part of a preview program. The aim of the program - to test compatibility of various products with the new Windows software. Having the code in the beta destroyed DR-DOS in any corporate environment that intended to move to windows. If you were an IT manager in those days, would you have recommended MS-DOS or DR-DOS to run windows on, given that windows gave errors with DR-DOS?
I think the point was that you claimed that the entire basis for the lawsuit was the dialog box. This is clearly not the case. Caldera could have pounded very hard at the exclusionary contracts and per CPU charges MS extorted from PC vendors.
In either case the rumored 150 mil is a substantial amount if MS lawyers are that stupid then they all ought to get canned. You know it's going to effect the bottom line even in a huge monopoly like MS.
War is necrophilia.
How much did they pay Borland?
War is necrophilia.
Thank you--I was just going to hunt for the AARD article. How anyone could read and understand this and come away thinking MS didn't deliberately disable competing DOS versions, I do not know.
Actually, I thought that the lawyers told him not to sign some type of paper that said not to discusse anyone what you talked about with IBM and such? I might be all wet on this, but I thought that's how it went
In my opinion, Caldera's case was the only major one that was valid. Seeing MS getting punished for things I don't believe they should be punished for hardly compensates for their evading real punishment for something which I wanted them to get zapped.
I still wish they hadn't settled. This was in essence a fairly clear-cut case of fraud (with regard to APIs and compatibility) and was the one case against Microsoft that deserved to win and nail that crew to the wall. Instead, it got lost in the whole monopoly myth and in the self-interested politicking by the heads of Sun, Netscape, et all. A real pity.
And I'm glad you hung around; reading the posts in this little flamewar has be fun. Shit (moderation) happens. Teaching the Linux CLI to your girl friend? Pretty cool. I don't agree with your Caldera arguments but I respect the way you didn't back down under fire. Glad to have you as a fellow /.er.
1000 SlashDot sigs
I thought the point of this was to expose Microsoft's dirty business habits, but apparently the point was to make money for Caldera. 150 million is such a small amount that Microsoft has admitted no wrong doing but just said "It's no longer cost effective to fight with you, here's a bone, go away." No legal precedent has been set and nothing has been proved. I'm rather disappointed in Caldera about this, but maybe that's easy for me to say since I'm not the one fighting the fight.
Next, check out http://www.calderasystems.com/ and you will see nothing. Nada. Zip.
I did. Look in the bottom right corner and there is a link. The two companies obviously continue to share close ties.
What impact does this have on all these other class-action suits we're constantly being told are ready to be brought?
Does this count as a defeat for Microsoft, as them admitting that they're wrong? Does it count as Caldera accepting that Microsoft didn't do anything bad at all? I'd say that both those wouldn't really be a satisfactory account of what settling out of court means. So what does it mean for other cases being brought?
Calm down, this is just an article. It might be crap, but then everything is someone else's crap in some way.
This was probably moderated up because some people enjoy having more than one side of the story. That wasn't really a bad comment in itself even if it was wrong (and I'm not saying anything about that). Anyone who moderated this might now have your information and even that doesn't mean that it was wrong to moderate it. If that guy has that much Karma, only one +1 would send it to 3, not that much considering the comments that get 3 and 4.
Yes and No. I have Linux on my home computer, but only for the purposes of teaching my girlfriend a little more about computers. I happen to think a command line interface is a good immersion tactic.
However, I don't use Linux for anything serious. I prefer Microsoft products, which, as you know, don't run on Linux, and I like the interface better.
Aside: I think it's awful you would pose this question as a sort of litmus test. I read slashdot for the science articles, not the Linux articles.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
no, they didn't. you are thinking of Caldera Systems--different company.
To me, it all stems from Ray Noorda's obsession with Bill Gates. He, Noorda, trashed Novell in pusuit of his personal vendetta. Then he jumps on board Caldera and brings along DR DOS only to continue the lawsuit.
That's visionary management?
BTW - anyone know where Ray is now?
Jim
Remember to take out the trash if you want to send email to me.
Without sounding like a troll it looks to me as if though Caldera's "cause" was purely to get a nice cheque out of it all.
It alleges that Microsoft is guilty of producing a product that is compatible with one of its other products, and incompatible with a competing product. How is that a crime? It happens all the time, and when anyone other than Microsoft does it, no one even notices.
/. lately? Open standards (or at least properly documented ones) are better than closed ones.
Yes they do. Haven't you been reading
Even if they are a monopoly, I don't see how the above can be considered a crime. If I write a piece of software and I've only tested it in Windows, it might be perfectly reasonable for me to only allow it to run under Windows, to ensure that the users get a consistent experience.
But, if I write the software *and* the means to run it, and set the software to only run in that OS, then I am abusing my status as a monopoly, which is very against the law.
At the very least, this strikes me as retroactive law, something I thought was outlawed by the Constitution. Microsoft in the early 90's was not aware it was a "monopoly," and in fact it was far from clear that they would be able to maintain their dominance in the market, much less expand it.
Yeah. Right. I'll believe that when pigs fly. They had desktop OS dominance, they had Win-based office suite dominance, and FUD down ta an art form. Once M$ got the market in anything it never let go.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
The problem was that beta versions of Win 3.1 used encrypted and obfuscated code to determine whether the underlying OS was MS-DOS or another system (e.g. DR-DOS). If the system was running DR-DOS, Win 3.1 would display a very threatening warning message--one that would surely scare DR-DOS users into switching back to "safe" MS-DOS.
What's revealing about the 'AARD' code (used to "smoke out" a competitor's DOS) was that it had the following traits:
- It was XOR encrypted, obfuscated, and self-modifying
- It fiddled with the "single step" interrupt to defeat debuggers
- It used an artificial and irrelevant test for DOS compatibility
I can think of no legitimate reason why they needed this code (and the fact that they went to such lengths to hide it is particulary revealing).Though there may have been some problems with DR-DOS, in many ways it was superior to MS-DOS. It led in features, but trailed in market share. It may have eventually tanked anyways, but this smear attack by MS didn't help things much.
Dr. Dobb's Journal did an excellent analysis of the AARD code. You can find out more here.
I especially love the part about:
Anyway, don't get too angry about this. Remember that for your company $150 million probably isn't even significant digits. I mean it wouldn't be noticed after round off error.
Be insightful. If you can't be insightful, be informative.
If you can't be informative, use my name
no more, I say
armed with the flash of reality this story and it's comments have given me, I have great enthusiasm for acquiring the skills necessary for hacking and taking an active role in the open source idea. I've been indifferent to M$ untill now, and I still think the OS is pretty good, but it could be so much better, though it never will be.
off I go to learn to code...anyone have any advise?
-----------------------------
Non-fatal error detected: error #4D53
(Please contact Windows 3.1 beta support.)
* Press ENTER to continue.
ENTER=Continue.
-----------------------------
But the beta that contained this code was released to thousands of people.
I'm a big company and I'm looking to buy Win3.1 when it comes out. I get given a beta to evaluate and on running it on my DR-DOS systems I get a "non-fatal error" but running it on my MS-DOS system doesn't give the warning. Hence, I feel uncomfortable about running DR-DOS with it (true FUD) so buy MS-DOS instead.
Now, what makes this smell bad is the fact that the code that did the tests
a) Turned off debuging interrupts to make to harder to debug
b) Was encrypted self-modifying code
In fact the code was very elegant but it still smells bad.
-- Kernel Panic: Error reading
Also remember that even though the offending code never shipped to consumers
In fact is was - it was just deactivated by default. It could be reactivated by changing a single byte in the binary.
Stuart
-- Kernel Panic: Error reading
Face it, Caldera got a tenth of what they were asking, and is probably still trying to decide what to do with the cash. Maybe the DoJ can stare a Microsoft legal borg in the face and take his balls, but any other private concern is going to have to satisfied with a short and curly.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
Given that:
(a) Settlements usually take a while to work out;
(b) Companies don't just give money to other companies without a good reason (ie., the $30MM influx); and
(c) One event proceeded the other rather closely,
don't you wonder if there is a cause and effect relationship here? And, if there is, what are the Sun/Novell/etc. guys after that might cause them to press Caldera for closure?
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
I like your new user bio...
:)
PS: Your posts have always been rather intelligent and at the very least interesting. My post was not a personal attack just a disagreement with your views.
PPS: That said, microsoft sux
CP/M-86 was available for the Aug 81 roll-out of the PC, but the period we're discussing is late '80. What is the date on your 8" CP/M-86?
The "mythological" version of the story is that MS told IBM to go to DR becase "we don't do OS's". MS only came up with MS-DOS (aka SB-86, AKA QDOS 0.1, etc) when IBM was unable to negotiate a pre-release deal with DR.
When you say "several years" before Aug 81, that would imply 1978 or so.
While the 8086 was out in 1978, I don't believe your claim that the OS for it was out so early.
So, let me get this straight. Just because a smart person commits a crime, it's not a crime? I don't particularly agree with the way his prosecution went or the conditions to which he was exposed, but the dude is a criminal, genius or not. Criminals deserve to go to jail.
Unfortunate?! $150M?!?! That's a lot of cash, man - Caldera just got another $30M in funding and was very happy about it. This one is five time as much and they don't need to give up equity in return.
This is a tragedy. Yes, Caldera gets a few million, but Microsoft made many times more than this in burying DR-DOS and locking down the future. This kind of end hopefully won't happen in the DOJ case with the final result being, yes we unfairly buried Netscape and the rest using illegal FUD and anticompetitive practices. As compensation for our criminal activity, here is some chump change, now let us go back to selling our products now that we have killed the competition in the areas that we wanted to sell in.
---
"And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."
-----
Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
Although this is chump change for ol' Bill, I agree that it has set a precident for MS and I'm sure there will be many more behind this one.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
they will pay with OEM versions of the windows operating system.
when they try to return the disks for their money, MS will turn them away
I hardly call that Flamebait. Not-Anti-Microsoft, maybe.
It is an opening for discussion, nothing more. The guy has a point, too...
Somebody moderate him up to 2, and possibly "Interesting" as well. That's the kind of post we want more of, not "Micro$haft 5UcK$!!!"
First of all, Gary Kildall of "Intergalactic Digital Research" did _not_ have an OS ready for the PC. He was willing to make one, but Microsoft approached IBM and said they could make one. Then they purchased QDOS, which was a reverse-engineered version of C/PM, and they adapted it to their needs. In other words, the DOS which is still under Windows 98 (etc) today is a reverse-engineered version of CP/M by Digital Research. I'm not sure about how DR became Caldera... I think they made a DR-DOS product and then Novell bought it. (Interesting Tie-in: Novell also used to own WordPerfect and all of the other WordPerfect suite of programs. They sold these to Corel. Novell, if they had waited a little while longer, could have made a wicked Linux distribution with all of their netowrking know-how, and integrated WP into it. That would have been really awesome for Linux... too bad.)
Your right, I think they would have won had they finished it. Although, with the DoJ going after Microsoft, would that really be necessary? I think what was most important to Caldera was that they made sure Microsoft finally received some justice. As stated on their Q&A page, they played a large role in future cases against Microsoft, and as long as they got the ball rolling they saw no need for an even larger compensation.
"...if that lawsuit had actually gone to court, we would've finally had the facts heard about how Microsoft designed Windows 3.to be artificially slower on competing DOSs."
This settlement is the business equivalent of a confession, IMO.
-------------------------
-------------------------
"People ask FAQs all the time". - David Allen
Money is not the goal.
Making good software and giving it to anyone who wants it, in good will is the goal.
In other words, linux is supposed to communistic, anarchic. Not capitlistic. Caldera have obviously proved that they only want the money. That $1.5m will only go into the pockets of the ppl high up in Caldera, not the programmers.
They're making money off something which was not intendeed to have money made off it. It's hypocritical, and i can't see it doing anything for the open source movement.
*steps off his black & red soap box*
- - -
I too remember getting similar fatal errors installing over DR-DOS, and we weren't a Microsoft Beta site (at least not knowingly).
You know it occurs to me if only the DRDos folks had GPL'd and opened sourced their OS in the early days (after MS stole everything and kept them out of the PC market), we might have avoided this whole MS nightmare anyway.
He did not commit a crime. The law was applied retro-actively in direct violation of the constitution of the United States of America (ex post facto). He was held without charge or due process. Then the government decided to sleep with Motorola and a bunch of other big companies to trump up the amount of "damage" done by Kevin. What Kevin did does not match the jail time he has received. This was a political punishment, not justice. http://www.2600.com/ http://www.kevinmitnick.com/home.html
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
I've got to say that you're really out to lunch in your knowlege of how Microsoft screwed over Caldera (and pretty much everybody else) in the last ten years. In order to destroy the market for DR-DOS, microsoft inserted an extra piece of code to detect DR-DOS and tell users that Windows was not compatible. In fact, Windows was compatible, microsoft's software lied to the enduser. This deceit lead to people believing that DR-DOS could not be used with Windows, so people used MS-DOS instead. Monopoly status, or not, lying to increase your market share is against the law. It's called fraud, and it's what microsoft is all about.
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
I wonder if Microsoft should be obligated to release what could be considered "trade secrets" of it's product(s). It's true that, in terms of progressive growth, Microsoft gains many advantages by "lending a helping hand" to product manufacturers, but certainly no viability exists in trade for a company that makes it easier for it's competitors to do better, cheaper. McDonald's certainly would not be willing to hand over it's process for french fries to any of it's competitors ... as would Levi's jeans be understandably reluctant to hand over work-flow plans to Calvin Klein in hopes they develop a better product, cheaper and quicker. It's hard to fault a guy who, for the most part, uses his brain to find ways of accomplishing the goals he likes. But it's equally hard to find justice in the fact that lots of toes were stepped on during the process. Surely there is a middle-ground here -- what could it be, though? The stakes are so high now, who has the authority to say what?
-- muertoloco
::shakes head:: This could have been the one. The NTSC case was nothing compared to this. M$ could have been chopped to mincemeat in one fell swoop. Why?
Monopoly + Predatory Practices = ANTI-TRUST
And it's no big secret that M$ had that dumbass double-licensing deal where PC vendors had to pay for MS-DOS, whether they loaded it or not. This drove DR-DOS (superior in many respects, to say nothing of being competition period) into the ground.
Bill knows this would have put them away for good, that's why the settlement came so quickly.
What makes me want to lurch in a bucket though is that Caldera actually buckled for a payoff. That is so weak and disgusting. Anyone can see that this wasn't about money, it was about taking out one of the two evil empires corrupting all of IT. It was a moral and ethical battle that no real human could let go, just for a personal financial kickback. (You know the dudes are Caldera are running out to buy silver PORSCHEs right now, 3 cents a share my ass)
It sickens me that anyone could sell out when so close to imminent victory over one of the greatest wrongs ever to spawn all this corruption and stagnancy of innovation and quality in our field.
I must say I am ashamed to call myself a tech this day.
Got a good job in the city,
Trollin' on the Slash ev'ry night and day,
And I never lost one minute of sleepin',
Worryin' 'bout the way moderators might have been.
CHORUS:
Big mouse keep on clickin',
Proud Troller keep on burnin',
Trollin', trollin', trollin' on the 'puter.
Refreshed a lot of screens in Memphis,
Previewed a lot of comments down in New Orleans,
But I never saw the good side of the trolls,
'Til I hitched a ride on a river boat queen.
CHORUS
Trollin', trollin', trollin' on the 'puter.
If you come down to the 'puter,
Bet you gonna find some moderators who live.
You don't have to worry 'cause you have no karma,
Trollers on the river just can't give.
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Trollin', trollin', trollin' on the 'puter.
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brought to you by the greatest troller on slash
Well, humor value is largely untouched. Wouldn't it be funny if something like this was the real explanation?
Not that I can think of such a case at the moment, except maybe the Netscape vs. MS case (where did that ever go anyhow?). Microsoft's been on good behavior the last couple of years, probably trying to keep from being dismantled by the DoJ.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
In a certain sense, Digital Research did open up their source at the time. It is my understanding they made their source available to just about anybody who wanted to port it to a new chip.
Their business model required that they get their operating system running on as many different computers as possible. They made their money selling apps for the system. Ironically many developers thought they abused their inside knowledge of CP/M to dominate that market and chose to develop for IBM/MS's PC-DOS instead when it came out.
It was the license indeed (as miniwookie suggests) that was their downfall. It never occurred to them someone would want to fork their code and use it to compete with them. But legal matters were never their strongest suit. Robert Cringely (in "Triumph of the Nerds") suggests their fear of IBM's NDAs was what caused them to pass up the most lucrative offer ever missed.
But don't blame them too much for not using the GPL. In fact, it is my understanding that this is the very deal which led to the open-source movement understanding the need to have a "public license" in the first place.
If anybody knows whether there is a connection there, I would be very interesting to see this confirmed in any way (or contradicted, if my understanding is in any way false).
Remember, too, this is the second settlement MS has agreed to with regard to the Digital Research code. They cut a deal with DRI rather than let a judge compare their source code to CP/M. So, the real thing they probably paid this $160 million for is probably so no court would have to rule on the accuracy of their claim that DR-DOS was "just a clone of MS-DOS" when the opposite was probably closer to the truth.
Remember, a lot of their mystique is based on the idea they were some kind of visionary coders. Their aura of invulnerability would be greatly hurt if it ever came out they stole the code that enabled the whole $400-billion rip-off.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
I specifically said any silicon valley startup has more innovation than M$. You confused that with open source. 99% of the startups aren't open source.
Redmond doesn't innovate. They steal, buy, plunder, but they do not innovate.
--
Infuriate left and right
VCs invest $5M. A year later, it gets M$ attention. They offer a choice: $5M or they develop (at much greater expense) their own hurry up version.
M$ has done this many times. Look up their record.
BTW, "unrefuseable offer" is a variation on the old Mafia phrase "an offer you can't refuse", meaning refusal is not a healthy option.
--
Infuriate left and right
The cnet article says M$ says there will be a 3 cent per share charge. Multiply that by the number of shares. Pretty simple. Certainly not particularly precise: between 2.5 and 3.5 cents a share. But that's close enough for this kind of arithmetic. What more do you want?
--
Infuriate left and right
You must be terribly naive to think those few words are the sole cause of this and other lawsuits and the terrible ill-will felt by most slashdotters and the larger computer community out there. How long have you been holed up in M$, getting all your outside info from the inhouse propaganda machine?
I have friends who lost a chance to start a company, and I lost a job, because the Venture Capitalists said it was too good an idea: as soon as it got big enough for M$ to notice, they'd make an unrefuseable offer, and the investors wouldn't get their money back. Do you enjoy working for a compnay with that reputation?
Do you have any idea how many companies were driven out of business by M$ vaporware announcements?
Do you have any idea how many companies had to choose between taking a lousy offer from M$ to buy up their technology or going out of business when M$ copied their work and gace it away?
Do you have any idea how many companies entered into investment negotiations with M$, only to find M$ backing out after seeing their secrets, and starting up a free inferior version, just to drive them out of business?
Buster, if you like your work, then you don't like being creative, except with the truth. Any 2 bit Silicon Vally startup shows more innovation in a month than M$ has in its entire history.
Enjoy your trailing edge work while you can. Be prepared to bail with your stock options fast, cuz when the share price starts sliding, it's gonna go fast. And I wouldn't bet on Balmer et al repricing your options to bail your ass out for you.
--
Infuriate left and right
> In other words, do you really think Caldera truly expected to get $1.6G from Micros~1? Do you know anyone
>who has really expected to get what they sue for?
I don't know where Caldera came up with their number, but if it had any justification, I'd assume they'd settle for a figure much closer to that $1.6x10^9.
If you figure that the lawyer costs usually run 20% for settling out of court, 30% if it goes to trial & 40% if it goes to appeals, then it would make sense for them to settle for a quarter to half of what they wanted. Caldera would only settle for 10% of their claimed damages if they realised that their case wasn't anywhere near as solid as they thought -- in other words, they needed a way to retreat without losing face or suffering more damages.
If this is the case, Micros~1 in effect gave them a quarter to go bother somebody else. Which would be odd, since up to this moment, it looked as if they had a very solid case against Micros~1.
I'll wait for further verification. This just might be smoke & mirrors, like the FOAF who claimed Micros~1 was willing to settle with the DOJ by making Windows ``open source."
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
All that is beside the point. Trust me on this. When it comes to the Caldera v. Microsoft lawsuit, Caldera Systems won't be getting a dime. The lawsuit was between Caldera, Inc. and Microsoft. Caldera, Inc. won (so to speak) and Caldera, Inc, not Caldera Systems, gets the money. C.S. is its own, totally independent company with no relationship to the lawsuit.
Still not speaking for Lineo.
-Erik -- --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
Still not speaking for Lineo since I don't know anything.
-Erik -- --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
All kidding aside, this really overshadows the venture capital they've been getting for their proposed IPO.
Hope they can strike while the iron is hot.
Microsoft's Windows monopoly status isn't at issue here.
If they didn't have monopoly status, then how is what they did illegal? Simply making a product that is incompatible with a competitor (even deliberately so) is not illegal under any law I know of.
However, they did have a monopoly on the DOS market of the time, and it was DR-DOS that Microsoft was trying to kill (a competitor) using their monopoly power.
But the allegation is not that they used their DOS monopoly to promote Windows, sine that would have been nonsensical. The allegation is that they used their Windows monopoly to promote DOS. And it is far from clear they had a Windows monopoly at the time.
There were a couple of threads about this in an Intel-vs-AMD story a while ago, and there were several reasons that this is not possible. The question is: could Megacorp destroy Tinycorp by selling its chips at a loss until Tinycorp went out of business? There are several reasons the answer is no:
Market share. Megacorp has a lot more of it, which means that they will lose money faster than Tinycorp.
Supply and demand. If you lower the price of something, the quantity demanded goes up. That means that not only are you selling chips at a loss, but you are selling a lot *more* chips at a loss than you otherwise would.
Other production: Meanwhile, Tinycorp can keep its prices at its break-even point, and lie low while Megacorp runs out of money. In many cases, they can even shift their resources to other markets. They know that Megacorp needs to recoup those losses through higher prices, and all they have to do is wait for prices to increase again.
Speculators. Megacorp also has to worry about people buying up their product and saving it in a warehouse for prices to go back up. This not only means that they are going to have to sell more than ever, but they will then be unable to raise prices much when it's over.
Capital markets. Even if Megacorp does everything else right, Tinycorp can probably still go to the capital market and raise the money to keep fighting. After all, if Megacorp fails to knock Tinycorp out of the market, that will give it a strong position after Megacorp gives up. This is particularly true if Megacorp is trying to destroy several companies at once. Some of them might drop out, but others will stay in business and will be able to pick up the customers that the losers lost. Thus their position is valuable.
I believe Standard oil actually tried this tactic on its competitors and failed. The antitrust action against them happened after they had already lost their total grip on the oil industry to upstart competitors. This is how antitrust law generally works: it protects mediocre companies from their more able competitors.
In order to destroy the market for DR-DOS, microsoft inserted an extra piece of code to detect DR-DOS and tell users that Windows was not compatible. In fact, Windows was compatible, microsoft's software lied to the enduser.
No, this code never made it to the end user. It was in the beta version, and even there it didn't specifically say that it was incompatible, but only gave a vague, and non-fatal error.
Yeah, but that model is oversimplified when MegaCorp has it's hands in many diverse businesses (such as chipsets and motherboards, which is the lever Intel is applying to AMD lately).
But that's a seperate issue. The AMD-vs-Intel thing was just an example of "predatory" pricing.
Netscape didn't have a cash-cow like Windows95. They had their internet server and their portal.
Funny, I don't see them complaining. Their founders are now wealthy, and their product will soon be integrated into AOL.
Are you kidding? THey're all but dead.
I really don't have a clue what you mean here. They were purchased by AOL for several billion dollars, which is a whole heck of a lot more than it was worth when they started. And even today Netscape has a little under half the browser market, with AOL giving Microsoft about 10%.
To the extent that they are "all but dead," that is largely their own fault. Netscape has not really improved much since version 3.0, and it has gotten buggier and more bloated. And IE really is a decent product in comparison. I see this as the proper result of competition: two approximately equal products each get about half the market.
If I remember correctly, the definition of ex post facto has to do with the enforcement of newly written laws, not with enforcing existing laws.
You're right. If Caldera is arguing that MS was a monopoly in '91, knew it, and did this anyway, then that would not be ex post facto law and would not be unconstituional. But if they are simply using the fact that Microsoft is now a monopoly to punish actions that occured before the monopoly status existed, then that is ex post facto, since there is no way Microsoft could have known whether their market share would continue to increase.
The question, then, is was Microsoft a monopoly in 1991? If you went back to 1991 and asked 10 antitrust lawyers if Microsoft is a monopoly under the Sherman Act, I'd bet you'd get at least 8 "no"'s. The simple fact that they have a larger market share than anyone else certainly doesn't make them a monopoly, since every industry has a market leader. As I said elsewhere, I'd be curious to see some numbers. Apple and OS/2 were both viable competition back then. I have a feeling, though, that the Windows market share was substantially less than it is today, and given how controversial Microsoft's monopoly ruling is today, it's even harder to make that case 10 years ago.
I'm going to blow my cover, such as it is, and state flat-out that I'm a Microsoft employee.
That has always been obvious. Just one question: do you use Linux?
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
My response is, what the HELL? we settled over that!!! Especially when I ruminate over the fact that it only appears in a single beta, never saw a shipping customer, doesn't mention DR-DOS, AND allows you to continue unhindered
I remember a chain of events that resulted in an expose in the pages of Doctor Dobbs re code that was encrypted in shipping versions of Win3.1, having to do with detection of Non-MS Dos. I remember Brad Chase blandly and patronizingly denying that anyone should read anyone into this. I don't really think anyone bought that line. Does anyone have more details on this?
Where there's smoke there's fire. When you see 1 roach, you know there's 100 more you didn't see. I don't think that was the end of it.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
As far as anyone other than Microsoft and Caldera is concerned, this case just went "poof" and disappeared.
IANAL, but I don't think that's correct. The facts are still there, and Caldera could be subpoened to testify in any other case to which the evidence might be relevant, to help establish a pattern of condut. That would include anybody else with a similar axe to grind with Microsoft, or could even include the government since the issues in Caldera's case weren't even touched on in the current anti-trust action. If somebody hires David Boise to go after Microsoft with their own complaint, do you think he'll ignore Caldera's evidence and just let it sit there?
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
While none of this evidence is directly usable for any other action I can think of, it could (and would) be entered into evidence as part of the process of "establishing a pattern of behavior" in any similar case against Microsoft. Not that I can think of such a case at the moment...
Oh, I can. Does the phrase "Dos isn't done until Lotus won't run" mean anything to you? I supposed IBM might just be a little interested in the way things are going. What do you think the chances are that noone else had problems this way? Why would Apple not now launch its own suit over apparent breakages of, hmm, Quicktime I think it was?
Microsoft's been on good behavior the last couple of years...
Do you really thing so? Old habits die hard.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
For having no idea about what you are talking about, you seem quite sure of yourself.
It alleges that Microsoft is guilty of producing a product that is compatible with one of its other products, and incompatible with a competing product. How is that a crime?Nope, that's not at all what the case is about. The case was about 2 things.
One, Forcing distributers to put your product above another competitors product, where you are at an advantage. Like if there was a company that sold boards and a company that sold nails. Builders need both, so all is fine. However, the company that makes nails decide to sell boards also. But how will they get builders to buy their boards? Ah, no problem. You go to the company selling the nails and tell them that they won't have nails to sell unless they sell your boards. Problem solved, right? A company that doesn't sell nails, is a company that doesn't sell boards either, no matter who's boards they are.
So, in this case, Microsoft effective kills competition by preventing OEM's from profitably selling DR DOS, instead of their DOS. It isn;t just Microsoft. All large companies that have a product that no one else makes, does the same thing. And they are also sued under anti-trust law, just like Microsoft was.
Second, it is wrong to do something just because it destroys competition. Normally, companies will do this by selling their product at a loss until the competitor is forced out of business. However, this could be just about anything. Say there's a product that's requires a widget of a certain size. You make the widget and I make the widget. However, I make more volume then you do. The company that makes the product has contracts with both of us. However, I soon decide that you are not needed. I can the size of my widget, and tell the company that they either modify their product, or loss the contract. Well, volume of widgets that you produce is not enough to keep them in business, while I can produce enough widgets to meet their need. You quickly go out of business. In Microsoft's case, "adjusting the size of the widget", meant adding some code to prevent Windows from running on DR DOS. The motive was the same. No one expects MS too think of others first. But yet companies aren't allows to do things for the sole purpose of putting competitors out of business, either.
-BrentThat dialog box is only a small part of the case. And if it was just an innocent example of MS covering their asses, how do you explain the methods that they used to hide it?
Caldera had you guys by the balls; you're lucky that your MS stock is still worth something. The only good thing that has come out of this is that maybe all the other Microsoft victims will see this settlement and at least get the idea, "Hey, at least we can get a few pennies on the dollar for the damage Microsoft did to us. That's better than nothing." and they'll start queueing up to sue. I can only hope.
I guess that's a more comfortable thought than trying to recreate what was going through Microsoft's mind when they coldly calculated how to prevent other software companies from getting a foothold in the market.
*cough* *sputter* Oh dear. I think I've just been trolled.
I guess you would prefer it, if people didn't hold you responsible for the choice that you have made. Well, that's not gonna fly around here. If you weren't even with the company yet in '92, then surely when you joined, you knew what you were getting into. And you did it anyway.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'm not familiar with the details of the case, but I don't see any way Microsoft's actions could be considered illegal.
As I understand it, this is Caldera's case:
First, it isn't that DR-DOS was incompatible with MS-DOS. It was that Microsoft put a check into MS-Windows to specficially detect third-party DOSes and disable Windows. Not because they were incompatible, but because they were competition.
Second, Microsoft is a monopoly. Since they own the market for Windows, excluding a competitor would do serious damage to that competior.
In the USA, it is not illegal to be a monopoly, but it is illegal to use that monopoly to compete. That was (in a nutshell) Caldera's case.
(Oh, and to whoever moderated the above post down as "Flamebait": Get a grip. Just because you don't agree with something doesn't mean it is a flame.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
just as a quick reminder (to you and all other that post from within major companies) /. is a VERY public forum. A quote attributed to "a Microsoft Employee" carries plenty enough weight, esp. if backed up by another one. This has happened a number of times for different stories and companies. Just saying, remember where you are, and where a permanent record of what you are saying remains.
+&x
Linux is, I'm sure, a very competent operating system. However, it is also elitist. The predominant ethic scorns newbies and laughs at ignorance. Linux is a step backward, in my view, from my personal goal of software that brings the power of technology to truly uninformed novices who could benefit from computers but who have been taught - by people like yourself - to fear it. Microsoft is the only company that seems to care about this crowd. That is why I choose to work for them.
No offense, but that is the single most misinformed paragraph I have read in a long time.
Check out the mailing lists and see how much newbies are scorned. There are a few pricks in them (and many hang out here), but for the most part, people get help right away.
Authors of OSS tend to actually listen to the users. They help them out, rather than recommending a "reinstall." Other users help out too, all of the time. Look at all the HOWTOs, lists, Ask Slashdot, and individual people who go out of their way to help someone out.
I even help out Windows users. I'm not nearly as knowledgeable about it as I am with Linux, but I help wherever I can.
It wouldn't make much sense for me to tell people to fsck off when they have questions about Linux. If people get scared off, that means less apps for me to choose from.
Actually, in my experience, it's the Windows people who are elitest. I have been laughed at by people who say, "sorry, but I like living in the present with a GUI. Not any of that command line crap." Now *that's* ignorance.
IBM's PC had a 16-bit processor, while CP/M was only an 8 bit OS, that was the problem.
Nice try, no cigar. CPM-86 had been around for several years at that point. I should know; I still have my original 8" CPM-86 disk complete with three-digit serial number.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
If your really want to help the masses quit and get a job at Apple. Or better yet pick an open source project that you are interested in and design the best damned gui ever made for it.
Use your talents to help better mankind and not put a few more dollars into the pockets of the richest man in the universe.
War is necrophilia.
I wish Linux and Unix developers could see and admit the ways in which Linux and Unix are elitist. We'd all be so much better off if we'd just see this objectively and work on it.
Why do programs in Linux still have arbitrary, meaningless, abbreviated names? Why is the directory structure still obscure? Is there a fear of typing more than 3 letters? And we (as a group) act as though KDE was some amazing accomplishment toward giving the average user a good GUI, but it's not. It's horribly cluttered, and the names of programs are still meaningless abbreviations.
It's not an argument about which is better, GUI or command Line. It's just a question of why are we still using outdated, historical names for everything? It's like an old-time programmer who scoffs at C, Perl, and Java, saying assembly is more powerful, and only clueless newbies would want to program in a higher level language.
..and don't even get me started about program installation and permissions hell.
It may be a better operating system (actually, I have little doubt of that), but there is a lot of obscurity in there that Linux folks actually seem to embrace, for no reason.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
So Caldera was able to get DR-DOS at firesale prices, and then sued Microsoft for causing it to be available so cheaply in the first place. Does this seem pretty circular to anyone else out there?
First of all, if Microsoft hadn't crushed DR-DOS and Caldera owned it, then Caldera might have a product which would be making a profit (sure, they were able to buy it cheaper, but that's a rather lame argument since it was cheaper because it didn't have much profit potential). But that's not really the point because Caldera purchased it specifically for the rights to sue Microsoft. Part of the price of the rights DR-DOS was, or at least should have been if Novell had priced it properly, the potential gains from a lawsuit against MS. Someone must have the right to sue MS for what they did to DR-DOS and Caldera purchased those rights from Novell, there's nothing circular about it.
If the lawyers felt that settling was the best legal decision, then I'd guess that they know better then me. The lawyers probably spent hundreds of hours studying the case, and the merits of it. Who are you to claim that they are idiots?
If they are the same individuals that tried to defraud the Hon. Jackson with that falsified videotape, they certainly seem like idiots to me. but regardless, I believe the reason we settled was to end the litigation as a gesture towards our stockholders. The lawyers probably were taken off guard when the motions to dismiss were denied - they hadn't expected a real, protracted lawsuit, I"m guessing.
If you think that that "dialog" was the only thing the case was about, then no wonder you are confused. Is that what the internal memo told you to believe the case was about?
There was no such memo. They don't encourage us to worry about the trials here; we're repeatedly told to behave just as we always have and let the lawyers take care of it. Of course, many of us also do our own investigation on the side. The dialog message I quoted above was extracted from the AARD Dr. Dobbs article, actually.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
DDJ does seem pretty good. This month's security issue has convinced me to get a subscription.
However, I'm not sure it's legally relevant whether Microsoft wanted to disable DR-DOS with the concealed code. It certainly looks dastardly, doesn't it? But legally, Caldera would have had to prove harm, and I'm not sure they really could do that, considering that the error was ignorable, only present in a single beta build, and that, furthermore, developers writing apps for either platform would supposedly have been supported by the "100% compatible DR-DOS".
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Thank you for bringing up this valid point. I have changed my user info to reflect my affiliation.
However, I would like to explain that I didn't disclose my employer because
1) people here hate MS irrationally and I didn't want to end up in dozens of tedious scraps over nothing. Don't bother denying it, you know it's true.
2) we've been asked by the company not to post anything about our legal woes that might seem like an official statement if it were twisted out of context. That seems to happen a lot these days... Of course I'm about as far from official as you can get, but that hardly seems to stop some people.
However, I don't see there's much choice now. Hopefully my non-MS posts, which constitute a large majority, will continue to be moderated with the same objectivity they always have. I somewhat doubt it, however.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
I'm in it for the ideals
*cough* *sputter* Oh dear. I think I've just been trolled.
The difference is, you get to be smug and superior and I have to spend 20% of my online time proving I'm not a devil simply because I have @microsoft.com behind my alias. Yes I'm resentful!
I guess you would prefer it, if people didn't hold you responsible for the choice that you have made. Well, that's not gonna fly around here. If you weren't even with the company yet in '92, then surely when you joined, you knew what you were getting into. And you did it anyway.
I won't respond to your other comments because I've already done so too many times, but I would like to point out to you that free software and Linux do not have a stranglehold on virtue.
Linux is, I'm sure, a very competent operating system. However, it is also elitist. The predominant ethic scorns newbies and laughs at ignorance. Linux is a step backward, in my view, from my personal goal of software that brings the power of technology to truly uninformed novices who could benefit from computers but who have been taught - by people like yourself - to fear it. Microsoft is the only company that seems to care about this crowd. That is why I choose to work for them.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Thank you very much for your kind words.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
It's nice to see Caldera get some money ... but they're not the ones who made DR DOS what it was when Microsoft started crushing it.
... but we'll never know now.
... it had more meat on it.
Besides, if that lawsuit had actually gone to court, we would've finally had the facts heard about how Microsoft designed Windows 3.to be artificially slower on competing DOSs. This is still debated today (many claiming that, like other historical events, it didn't happen).
It's sad really, that $150 million will silence an honest fight for truth. But I guess it was really about money, not truth. Many other companies could've used that precedent
Note: I was much more in favour of Caldera's suit than the DOJ's "Netscape" case
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I'm assuming that you don't have a problem with any of the Office related issues that have come up in previous anti-trust thoughts and discussions. For instance, MS Office in several versions, uses undocumented internal functions in Windows that are not available (as they are undocumented) to other Office application companies. When asked about these functions, MS at one time (in about 1993) responded that they were, in fact, to slow down MS Office and allow others to compete.
Hogwash.
Want to do more research on history before you get all upset about one message's meanings?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I'd like to point out that very few people would have been upset about your not mentionning that you're from MS as your E-mail address is, after all, "@microsoft.com" at the top of every message.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
72656B636148206C72655020726568746F6E41207473754A
A guaranteed $150 million today buys a lot more than a possible $1.6 billion tied up in appeals for the next decade and a half. And they probably wanted to get their money before the DOJ and everyone else ass-rapes Microsoft for every penny they've got.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Having worked for a company that had more
lawyers on its staff than legitimate employees
I must say this is true. ie we'll ask for
5x but will settle in a heartbeat for X.
The weird thing about this announcement is
timing. Wasn't there just an announcement this
morning about a big cash infusion over at caldera?
Why bother selling off big chunks of the company
at a huge discount to raise chump change (33+
million or so) when you have to know that you
are about to settle and get a windfall? What's going on in Orem, Uncle Ray?
Sounds to me that their CFO needs to find out what
the litigators are up to.
I'm sure the micros~1 lawyers were eager to settle
this one. Just think of all the possibly
incriminating documents that won't see the light
of day now.
The micros~1 folks really got the better deal on
this one. Let's not forget that the $1.6 billion
was subject to treble damages should the anti-trust case been proven. $5 billion is a
lot of money, even for bill & co. A hit like that
would cause spasms on wall street.
--chuck
Well when I think about the difficulty of convincing a jury of average (read computer un-savy) people that:
A) Windows and dos are really 2 seperate things
B) That DR-DOS was more than "Just a Clone" of DOS
C) That when MS played squash that competitive company DOS was really alive and well (win3.0 really didn't cause as much overnight change as people think)
I think that Caldera came out pretty well. sure they only got $150M instead of $1.6B but would you like your largest profit for the year to be lawsuit income?? With this money Caldera should be able to make some substantive improvements in their business. Be it a new product, more R&D, better support, or Bonuses for all the poor overworked coders :). In the end a much better company has this chunk of mulah now and the customers will surely be the ones to benefit.
<This .sig left intentionally blank>
Didn't M$ pay off Apple for their trademark infringement in the sum of $150 million as well?
Oh wait a minute, it was called an "investment" in $150 million of non voting shares.
My response is, what the HELL? we settled over that!!! Especially when I ruminate over the fact that it only appears in a single beta, never saw a shipping customer, doesn't mention DR-DOS, AND allows you to continue unhindered.
I'm not sure what the equivalent version was for the production release of Win 3.1. I was a DR-DOS 6 user when I went to install !in 3.1. There was a spurious error that I could NOT continue from. If I booted from a MSDOS floppy before installing win 3.1, then the install process worked perfectly, and the installed windows worked perfectly.
As a retail customer of all three products, I was bitten by spurious errors during win 3.1 installation on DR-Dos. I forget what the actual error messages were. Eventually MS gave me a copy of DOS 6.0 in exchange for sitting through a presentation on how wonderful it was, and I stopped paying attention to DR. I forget what the spurious errors were.
I think this is a pretty clearly cut and dried case of what happens to a company that, through intentional tactics, manages to obtain an unfairly large slice of the economic pie. Reeling, the small guys take some time to catch back up; but when they do -- they all have their hands out. There must be a built in measure of balance somewhat in the world of economics. The really ensconched players in the big picture, like the big tobacco companies, manage to fend off their demise with "good 'ole boy" tactics, which for some reason fail to work with what most of us associate to be the "next generation", which is why the sudden attack and vicious wounding in that segment of --firmly rooted-- american agriculture, history and industry, has taken place. But everybody "played ball", so to speak, so the progression of the "business" continued for an extended period of time. Microsoft, on the other hand, seems repeatedly to be accused of being unwilling to "play ball" with anyone -- my way or the highway, said with a growl in the gruff. The old ways don't work anymore, nor have they worked for some time. That, more importantly than most other factors I can think of, seems to be the ailment at Microsoft. The transition from one set of generational standards to the next -- and the resulting clash thereafter -- is obviously an important factor within the overall picture thus far in the legal actions brought against Microsoft. It's been a sea of change within an ocean of change since 1979 and I'm hard-pressed for an argument to the negative that what Microsoft did was understand better the concept of what a computer could become than the other guys at the time. And, if any of the other guys did happen to understand a couple of extra pieces of the vision, Microsoft assimilated the technology and did the stuff that Microsoft does to make it popular, and fill the coffers, which fueled the ideal, which filled the coffers, which gave more than a few folks one damn nice living. The trouble is -- the equivalent of hyennas have moved into the area. Microsft, being obsessed with a vision and the desire to be the king regardless of the consequences, has now found that, as with what appear to be many other laws of balance that exist in any identifiable system, being the king is undeseriable with no loyal subjects. As within another realm of instinctual competition, the pack is beginning to organize their attack. What will the king do?
-- muertoloco
.
As I rifled through that evidence, it seems to me that the DR-DOS detection was not the only evidence in the case. I felt it was key in that it identified DR-DOS as particulary a target of Microsoft's plan to cement its grip on PC OEMs. Its clear, however, that Caldera's complaint is about more than one act, unlike your defense.
never saw a shipping customer
It was seen by a group even more important than the OS end-user: It was seen by developers and integrators interested in using DR-DOS. I'm sure Microsoft views these guys as customers, doesn't it? In an emerging technology market, their decisions steer the masses. I was there, developing Windows software, using DR-DOS. I remember the uncertainty. I knew the potential that any company had to make its products not work well with another. It would not have taken a big problem to dissuade me from supporting DR-DOS.
something so patently unjust
Like patenting Style Sheets after the original CSS proposal?
And then when I think about Caldera coldly calculating on this extortion as they bought DR-DOS
Sure, lets not think about the scores of hardware / OEM clientel feeling trapped, tallying the potential economic loss from cliff pricing, unbundling Windows from MSDOS, or of simply getting on Joachim Kempin's list. Now those are some cold calculations.
proving I'm not a devil
No proof needed: I know many fine folks hired by Redmond. I hope you won't take these args personally.
I'm not an employee of either company. But I was a DR-DOS user when this stuff went down. Some comments, if I may:
1) MS used this very error message as a springboard for a serious FUD campaign. Microsoft convinced people that Windows-on-DRDOS was even more unstable than Windows-on-MSDOS.
2) The peice of code responsible for this was encrypted. Now, pray tell, why go to extreme lengths to hide the code if it was legitimate?
But that wasn't the only leg the lawsuit stood on. There was also the minor issue of per-processor licensing and other predatory pricing schemes designed to keep DR-DOS out of the OEM market.
So drown your sorrows in free coke and stock options. You get _no_ sympathy from me.
Didn't MS invest $150 mil in Apple to avoid some legal issues? It must be the most money M$ Legal Dept can take out of petty cash.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
...that Microsoft didn't have the guts to stand up for itself. I don't blame them, given how unfairly they've been treated in other cases, but I see no reason Microsoft should pay a cent to these vultures.
Consider the implications of this lawsuit. It alleges that Microsoft is guilty of producing a product that is compatible with one of its other products, and incompatible with a competing product. How is that a crime? It happens all the time, and when anyone other than Microsoft does it, no one even notices. But apperantly, now that Microsoft has been declared a "monopoly," it has to play by an entirely different set of rules.
At the very least, this strikes me as retroactive law, something I thought was outlawed by the Constitution. Microsoft in the early 90's was not aware it was a "monopoly," and in fact it was far from clear that they would be able to maintain their dominance in the market, much less expand it. They were still going at it with both Apple and OS/2, and either of them could easily have beaten MS if they had played their cards right. To punish MS for being a monopoly at a time when it was not generally agreed that it was a monopoly is ludicrous.
Even if they are a monopoly, I don't see how the above can be considered a crime. If I write a piece of software and I've only tested it in Windows, it might be perfectly reasonable for me to only allow it to run under Windows, to ensure that the users get a consistent experience. If someone comes out with a Windows variant, I don't see any obligation on my part to support that variant, and in fact, if I haven't tested it on that variant, it might be reasonable for me to refuse to allow it to run on that variant to make sure there are no unnecessary bugs. This logic doesn't change when the company concerned is Microsoft.
I'm not familiar with the details of the case, but I don't see any way Microsoft's actions could be considered illegal. I'm not even sure there's anything unethical about refusing to make one's product compatible with that of a competitor, whether one has a "monopoly" or not.
Obviously, the lawyers didn't agree with you. I find it humorous that a Microsoft employee who has no law training, and probably hasn't studied any of the evidence of the case, apart from what the press reported, thinks that he knows better then the lawyers how the case can be handled. Either two things have happened here. You are blowing hot air around, or Microsoft hired some lousy lawyers. Somethings telling me that the first guess is probably more correct.
If the lawyers felt that settling was the best legal decision, then I'd guess that they know better then me. The lawyers probably spent hundreds of hours studying the case, and the merits of it. Who are you to claim that they are idiots?
Back to the topic at hand, just today I was examining the "evidence"Yes, let's.
Here's the dialog you're all gloating over without having read:If you think that that "dialog" was the only thing the case was about, then no wonder you are confused. Is that what the internal memo told you to believe the case was about? IMHO, that was probably the weakest part of the case, which was probably why Microsoft decided to blow it way out of proportion and focus just on that. Much like how they spewed out garbage about "Freedom to Innovate" during the anti-trust trial, when the anti-trust trial had nothing ot do with their freedom to innovate.
-BrentIf Microsoft had lost the Caldera case -- if it had gotten to the point where a jury reached a verdict -- there would be a legal precedent on the books. Microsoft has managed to avoid that so far, always stalling or settling before anything goes in the record.
(Microsoft went to verdict in the Bristol case, but they won. There was only a preliminary injunction, since overturned, in Sun's Java case. Of course, the original DOJ case against Microsoft was settled.)
Jackson's finding of fact is preliminary; if he never reaches endgame (not even the finding of law, but an actual verdict with remedy/punishment), it's so much hearsay.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
It doesn't matter what they agreed. We'll never know. As far as anyone other than Microsoft and Caldera is concerned, this case just went "poof" and disappeared.
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
I have discussed the antitrust topics with konstant in the past. And I don't believe him to be unfairly biased at all!
How many Red Hat or AOL/Netscape employees who would love to see Microsoft drowned in litigation reply to this topic without such honesty? And they have every right to. Even if this good man konstant declined to mention his employer... perhaps, as a human with knowledge and feelings about this case has a right to speak. He has made no secret of his affiliations in the past anyway. And he raises a good point about the buying of a company just to prop up a letigious lawsuit against a rival! Read: AOL buys Netscape or Microsoft invests in Apple... etc...
In short, I'd like to say: "Listen to the message, and remember the source doesn't matter if the logic is valid!" Perhaps he can add something good regardless.
Personally I think $150 million is a valid amount to settle for and mutually beneficial to both parties, except of course for Novell Systems!
-Ben
You're lookig at it the wrong way. DR-DOS was sold as a financial asset, not just an operating system.
Novell had the right to sue Microsoft, but had better things to do with its time, or maybe couldn't afford to antagonize MS, or whatever. For whatever reason, Novell wasn't interested in pursuing a lawsuit, but nonetheless the potential for a lawsuit was a financial asset which the officers had a duty to do something with, if only to liquidate it at a fraction of its potential value.
It's just like selling your receivables to a collection agency. The customer is not off the hook because you struck the debt from your books.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You should have already disclosed this when posting as yourself (ie not an AC). I work for a large corporation, and when commenting on a story involving my company, I always mention it, as do many other /.'ers. I may choose to post my comment anonymously (we're not supposed to comment publicly on certain things), but I always make the point.
/. -- but because you didn't tell the whole truth.
Reviewing your User Info, I see no less than 9 MS-related comments (not including this one) over the last few weeks. None of them mentioned that you are a MS employee, although it was highly relevant.
Posts from this account can never be trusted again. Not because you are a MS employee -- I have no personal grudge against Microsoft, and think it's a positive thing that MS employees read and post on
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
I think Caldera stood a good chance to win a much larger settlement and to send Microsoft an important lesson: They will be held accountable to past illegal activities. I guess in their eyes that $150 million is better than nothing, considering what they paid for Dr-DOS.
I hope the Feds and States don't cave in.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
I'm going to blow my cover, such as it is, and state flat-out that I'm a Microsoft employee. And as a worker at MS, let me say that I am feel than a little pissed and betrayed by this settlement.
:) I just so happen to work at Microsoft and be kind of geeky. Imagine that.
Now, before you say anything, let me quell your paranoid delusions. I'm not paid to troll slashdot or anything like that (in fact, don't tell my boss my karma is in triple digits
Back to the topic at hand, just today I was examining the "evidence" Caldera was presenting in its suit against us in relation to the article posted earlier about the company. BTW, I consider Caldera's earlier post a rather cynical manipulation of the slashdot machine to drum up hype. They obviously wanted as many Linux eyes as possible watching their site before they changed the DNS redirection to www.drdos.org.
Having read the evil error dialog in question I simply cannot believe we would settle for even a penny in damages. In fact, I'm outraged that we let Caldera bully us into any money whatsoever. I personally think they should pay us for wasting our time.
Here's the dialog you're all gloating over without having read:
-----------------------------
Non-fatal error detected: error #4D53
(Please contact Windows 3.1 beta support.)
* Press ENTER to continue.
ENTER=Continue.
-----------------------------
My response is, what the HELL? we settled over that!!! Especially when I ruminate over the fact that it only appears in a single beta, never saw a shipping customer, doesn't mention DR-DOS, AND allows you to continue unhindered. I wasn't with the company in 92 or whenever win3x was in beta, but no matter how evil they may have been and no matter how much they may have tried to kill DR-DOS, that dialog contributed exactly nothing to the process. To submit it as "evidence" is a farce!
And then when I think about Caldera coldly calculating on this extortion as they bought DR-DOS. God damn I feel betrayed by the American legal system! Not to mention my own company, which I had thought would stand up against something so patently unjust!
Whatever you might think of my company, I love the work I do. It gets more exciting every year, and I know that Office, where I work, produces the highest quality productivity software in the world, bar none. So when a thug like Caldera takes advantage of our obviously compromised legal situation to levy this blackmail on us, it makes me livid.
There are some people at the company who seem relieved by this. Those are the people who only care about stock options. Yes, I imagine our stock will go up as a result. But I'm not in it for the money because god knows they don't pay me enough. I'm in it for the ideals, just like many of you who work in the Linux world. The difference is, you get to be smug and superior and I have to spend 20% of my online time proving I'm not a devil simply because I have @microsoft.com behind my alias. Yes I'm resentful!
But hell, what can I do? Guess I'll just go drown my misery in another free Coke and wait for Steve Ballmer to rain some platitudes down on us in a live simulcast...
Live it up while you can, guys. The suits will eat you sooner or later.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Microsoft did more damage than what Caldera is talking about with this trial. First of all, Caldera was never really hurt. Caldera bought DR-DOS in 1996 (from Novell, which had gotten it from Digital Research. While Novell owned it, it was called Novell DOS), and the DAY AFTER Caldera bought it, they launched this lawsuit against Microsoft. Kind of ironic, dont you think?
Also, The main reason Digital Research or Caldera has to be mad at Microsoft, is that Microsoft ripped them off to begin with. In the 70's, Digital Research made CP/M which was used by Microsoft, and was the most popular OS of the time. In 1981 when IBM was starting their PC, they couldn't get DR to make an OS for it, so Microsoft said they would make an OS for IBM. IBM's PC had a 16-bit processor, while CP/M was only an 8 bit OS, that was the problem. Microsoft bought QDOS (quick and dirty OS) from a small company in Seattle. QDOS was only a rip off clone of CP/M which could run on 16-bit processors. Microsoft then called it Disk OS, (the name DOS was also used by IBM internally in the 70s) and gave PC-DOS to IBM royalty-free. Microsoft then made money by licensing MS-DOS to IBM clone makers.
DR-DOS was made after PC boom by Digital Research to try to gain some of the marketshare which was rightfully theirs to begin with.
MS-DOS was only an unauthorized clone of CP/M adapted to run on 16-bit processors
So, I think Caldera should be concentrating on how Microsoft sold "their" DOS.
wavy dissolve, to the court's private meeting room
MS: Well, there's something you should know. We only have 400 million dollars anyhow, and we need most of that to maintain operations. How about $10 million and we'll settle this here and now?
Caldera:*shock* You're kidding! You guys are supposed to have countless billions!
MS:*wry bitter grin* Well, that is counted _before_ paying the salaries of this year's workforce, which of course is figured _after_ paying the tax assuming the outgoes for _two_ years ago...
Caldera:*ulp* You guys are worse than _we_ are, even with Cowpland.
MS: Kinda scary, isn't it?
Caldera: You said it.
MS: So how about settling for 8 million like good fellows, huh?
Caldera: You just said ten million!
MS: Stock fluctuation. Hey, give us a break.
Caldera: Sure. 200 million.
MS: You're crazy!
Caldera: And loving it. 200 million. Now.
MS: There isn't that much.
Caldera: Do tell! 150 million, then. Or we repeat what you just said to Wall Street. Because it would amuse us.
MS: Bastards! All right. 150 million. And you better settle and not be a problem to us anymore!
Caldera: In cash.
The truth is out there....
For the sake of argument, let's assume that Microsoft unfairly crushed DR-DOS, although I'm not so certain that it is indeed the case. So, if not for Microsoft, then DR-DOS would have had a healthy spot in the marketplace against MS-DOS. If that was the case, then Caldera would never have been able to purchase DR-DOS for the chump change that they paid for it, because DR-DOS would've been a lot more valuable. If Caldera was really interested in owning DR-DOS after the fact, then it seems like it was to their benefit that Microsoft severely lowered its value so that they could buy it on the cheap. So Caldera was able to get DR-DOS at firesale prices, and then sued Microsoft for causing it to be available so cheaply in the first place. Does this seem pretty circular to anyone else out there? Gotta love lawyers...
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I know the subject sounds contradictory, but there IS a certain etiquette to suing someone: the amount you're suing for should always be higher than the actual amount you're willing to settle with. Producing an initially high figure is intended to simply get the attention of the legal department of the company you're attacking. In other words, do you really think Caldera truly expected to get $1.6G from Micros~1? Do you know anyone who has really expected to get what they sue for?
Especially against Microsoft, you would need to heavily inflate the amount you "expect" from the settled suit.
S. Kevin Chang
Database Design and Programming
Disney Televentures
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
I'm one of the few (I suppose we're few) that's taken the time to read (or at least skim) all of the lawsuit material Caldera has posted on thier site. They had Microsoft cold on violations of the law that are far more serious than anything in the DOJ trial.
While it's not surprising that Microsoft should go to extraordinary lengths to keep this from going to trial (which was due to happen next week, IIRC), it *is* surprising that Caldera would be willing to do them such a favor for such a small sum of money. (C'mon, folks, LESS THAN 1%??!)
True, a trial would have been expensive for Caldera, but I still think the Caldera trial was a far bigger threat to Microsoft (both in itself and in addition as fodder for the DOJ)than the wimpy DOJ action.
Game over, man. All you college guys go get that MCSE, because they've got carte blanche to go full speed ahead, leaving behind the twisted wreckage of what was once a healthy software industry.
On the other hand, this means open source is the last best hope, even though its ability to deliver on the promise in the non-geek space has yet to be tested. I really think in a few years, this day will mark the turning point at which everything rested on the shoulders of a penguin. A fine penguin, to be sure, but very possibly not up to the task of slaying Goliath. (Note to those that moderate down any non-glowing comment about Linux: do a reality check: how many non-geeks do you know choosing Linux? A few possibly, but not a lot just yet.)
I needed a new distro this week, and just chose Corel after three happy (well, OK, not unhappy) years with Caldera. (My innate contrarianism and the fact that I'm sadly more interested in being a user than a hacker these days makes it the right choice.) Looks like I made the right choice. Winners never quit. Quitters never win. Caldera just threw in the towel before the bell even rang.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
This is such a shame....they had great documentation and really could have helped the rest of the world attempt to reign in the power of Redmond. Heck, they even had access to parts of the source code of Win95 (via a hotly contested subpeona). Now, none of Caldera's years of effort (and Novell's before them) will become part of a public court record; no precedent will be set. For that benefit ALONE MS should have coughed up FAR more $$.
But if that $30 mil influx of cash announced this morning was a big deal, five times that ammount still sounds pretty good. I guess Noorda doesn't have the staying power he used to.....
I was really looking forward to this trial, even more than the DOJ case.
C'est la vie.
I can't sit here and read this crap without feeling pissed as hell. Who the fsck moderated this up?
.
I don't blame the poster for his words because he admits to being young and not being at MSFT when this story broke...but to moderate it up is just obscene.
Moderators and all interested parties please read this article from a September 1993 issue of Doctor Dobb's Journal and decide for yourself if Caldera had a reason to sue for billion$ and if this was a frivolous lawsuit. Also remember that even though the offending code never shipped to consumers it was shipped to the trade press, who then would review Dr-DOS and in their reviews state that certain error messages popped up...(effectively killing Dr-DOS as a viable option for anyone who planned to buy it based on favorable reviews). Secondly, MSFT would not risk shipping the offending code to consumers less some enterprising hacker discover the truth about the error message, but they failed to account for enterprising hackers in the trade press
PS: DDJ is a first-class magazine. A bit over my head sometimes but first class nonetheless.
Furthermore, the math that folks have been doing (i.e. 3 cents per share * # shares microsoft) is flawed. Nobody really knows how much MS is actually paying, and nobody is going to tell either. I don't know, but I feel very confident that the total amount is much more than the alledged 150 million. Of course I don't know, since nobody around here will talk numbers (per the agreement with MS).
I am an employee of Lineo, but I'm not speaking for them (as if they would trust me).
-Erik -- --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
Bryan Sparks, CEO of Caldera said, "We are happy to have finally settled this lawsuit to the satisfaction of both companies" while casting furtive glances at the two hulking, brutish men in black suits, dark glasses and Microsoft employee badges standing behind him.
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Caldera, on their site http://www.drdos.com gives an answer as to why they settled and what they think they were achieving here
An excerpt from their Q&A page:
Q: I thought Caldera filed the case based on principals (or to change behavior), not just to collect money. What did you accomplish?
A: We actually believe that we accomplished several things during this process.
1. We led out on the recent series of investigations into Microsoft's business practices. When we filed our case in July 1996, no other private company or government agency was publicly investigating Microsoft's monopoly-related behavior. Netscape, SUN, Bristol, the DOJs recent case, and several class action suits all followed our filing.
2. We told the story. Many new facts regarding Microsoft's business conduct were made public during the lengthy pre-trial period of our case.
3. We stood up against them. We believe that our actions will have a deterring effect against future misconduct. We have demonstrated that it is possible to successfully file a lawsuit against Microsoft and have a positive result.
4. We helped to brand Linux as a legitimate competitor to Windows. Our lawsuit, combined with the governments case, helped publicize and legitimize the Linux brand. We believe that as a result of these lawsuits, Caldera Systems, Lineo and other Linux companies are stronger competitors to Microsoft, now and in the future.