Sendo Accuses MS of Stealing Smartphone IP

Nate B. writes "According this article in The Inquirer, it seems that Sendo, a UK based development house, has filed suit in Texas as of December 23 to recoup monetary damages for IP it claims Microsoft stole. From the article, 'The company's grievance is that after years of working closely with Microsoft on the development of Windows Smartphone 2002, the fruits of their endeavours were handed straight over to HTC, which manufactures the SPV handset for Orange.' The story also includes this cute footnote, 'When Sendo announced it was to receive funding from Microsoft, I and some other British journalists asked Sendo's Hugh Brogan at the press briefing, in the London Waldorf, whether he wasn't afraid that the company might just take its information and then dump his firm. He claimed then there was no possibility of that.'" Seems there was more to this story than originally thought.

Comments

Don't worry

[Easy2RememberNick]

Well if the SmartPhone works as well as my Toshiba e740 PocketPC (crash crash crash) Sendo has nothing to worry about.

Re:Don't worry

[leandrod]

> if the SmartPhone works as well as my Toshiba e740 PocketPC (crash crash crash)

It does crashes a lot, besides not installing unsigned apps, being slow and having several other problems.

Looks like MS took an unfinished product from Sendo and launched it thru other outlets. I would not be surprised if Sendo had left it unfinished on purpose, either that or MS did not let them have access to the source code to fix it and them they called it quits.

Lesson Learned

[syntap]

I guess you should stay and dance with the girl you brought to the prom!

Re:Lesson Learned

[Iamthefallen]

Yeah, but when you escort her home after the prom and find out the "girl" is really a man who now tells you to bite the pillow, this'll hurt a little, I think you have a right to be upset...

Re:Lesson Learned

[SharpNose]

Does ANYONE really benefit in the long term in relationships with Microsoft, either as user or partner?

Re:Lesson Learned

[jridley]

Why are these being modded to offtopic? Do the moderators not "get" the analogy here?

Re:Lesson Learned

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, let the mods fubar their mod points. I get them in the metamod ;) and kill their karma right back. You asshole/ incompetent mods _do_ know that metamod affects your karma, right?

Re:Lesson Learned

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic? Are the moderators smoking crack again?

My guess is the moderators couldn't find anyone to go to the prom with them, so they didn't get the joke and why it was very On topic.

Re:Lesson Learned

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the analogy is entirely inappropriate? In addition, shouldn't anything comprised entirely of some comparison to {insert ghastly company name here}'s actions to anal sex be moderated "(-5, Redundant)": the American fixation with that form of sex is tedious at best. I'm pretty sure there's a lot worse out there than sodomy.

Iamthefallen is another tragic case who feels the need to "prove" his sexuality in every other post by comparing whatever he dislikes to forms of sex usually associated with homosexuality. One can make obvious observations about those who protest too much.

Re:Lesson Learned

[Iamthefallen]

uhm, no...you didn't get it any more than the Offtopic mods did. You see, my post wasn't about homosexuality or any kinda gay bashing, it was about pretending to be one thing then screwing over the people you fooled when you reveal your true self, I was hoping with such an obvious analogy in the prom context I wouldn't have to explain it...but I guess it's easier to see malicious intent where there is none than to think and try to actually understand? Now put up your sword and take off that shining armor sir knight, there's little need for you here.

Oh, two more things, I'm not american, and are you trying to offend me by implying that I'm homosexual? Sorry, can't really take offense at that, interesting you should chose that as an insult though, some hidden homophobia?

Now we're offtopic

Re:Lesson Learned

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, two more things, I'm not american, and are you trying to offend me by implying that I'm homosexual? Sorry, can't really take offense at that, interesting you should chose that as an insult though, some hidden homophobia?

I didn't say you were American, and I didn't try to offend you; though if you found the suggestion that your obsession with using anal sex as a "bad thing to compare everything to" might be due to latent homosexuality in anyway offensive to you, I rejoice in that. People who use homosexual references as imagery to disgust and demean can suffer entirely appropriate embarassment as far as I'm concerned. Bigotry is best punished when used against itself.

I would suggest laying off the gay sex comparisons. There are many genuine comparisons you could have made where someone is being treated dishonestly, but a TV prom date is not one of them.

Re:Lesson Learned

[Iamthefallen]

Hey, I explained why I chose that particular analogy above, if you're offended by my point, say so, if you're offended because it happened to be about a transexual, tough, I chose my analogy because it conveyed the point well in the context the parent post started. I didn't mean to offend anyone and I don't think there's anything offensive in my comparison, it's all in your head.
Go on and point out offending posts when you see them, more power to ya. But don't go looking for things to offend you where there's no intent.

Re:Lesson Learned

[Daengbo]

It is unbelievable that this metaphor is still modded as off-topic, after how many hours? It is obviously a reference to agreeing to one thing, then finding something better and changing your mind. Kind of like what MS did, huh? Totally lacks fairness. Now I'm off-topic, but screw it.

Re:Lesson Learned

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suggest that if you don't appreciate people commenting and judging you on your posts, you stop posting.

In the meantime, I see no reason why not to lump you in with all the other "Company X doing this is like them f---ing us in the a--!" sad cases.

You know, your prom date could have stolen your credit card, or had another boyfriend. Either would have been more appropriate than your childish homophobic analogy.

Re:Lesson Learned

[Iamthefallen]

I appreciate people commenting on my posts indeed, but judging? If you judge me by one of my posts you really need to stop and think for a moment.

So I should just have offended women by calling them thieves and cheaters? How's that more appropriate?

And I explained my choice of analogy above if you'd care to actually read it, but in the meantime, I see no reason to not lump you in with those that have picked a cause and desperatly need to find something or someone to fight over it.

Re:Lesson Learned

[Anonymous Coward]

You explained your choice of analogy and I replied: IT sucks. It's irrelevent. It's inappropriate.

I gave you two examples of analogies that would have been appropriate. Do you think they were inappropriate because you can't spell analogy without "a-n-a-l" or something?

As for pet causes, I'm just tired of the unoriginal, pathetic, and homophobic overuse of anal sex in any description of the behaviour of companies and what have you who do things that aren't nice.

Had Microsoft pretended to be Sun microsystems, and then at the last moment told Sendo it was actually MS, and it was going to sell Sendo's smartphone, there may have been a vague resemblance to your ANALogy and what actually happened. But that's not the case. Microsoft was Microsoft, it didn't pretend to be anything else.

Your constant justification of this slipshod, inappropriate, and lazy analogy, your insistance that anyone who criticises you for it is in some way in the wrong, your resorting to ad-hominems by attempting to suggest I've "picked a cause" (I READ YOUR FUCKING POSTING YOU MORON AND SAID I AGREED WITH A MODERATOR WHO MODDED YOU AS THE UNORIGINAL REDUNDANT LOSER THAT YOU ARE) suggests to me you're one unable to take a clue however freely given. Anyone else would have said "Ooops" by now and resolved to be a little more intelligent, original, and appropriate in their choice of analogies. But I guess for you it's easier to criticise those who point out your faults than to correct them.

Re:Lesson Learned

[Iamthefallen]

Maybe someone else worries so much about being PC that they would've said "Ooops, sorry!" out of fear of being branded a homophobe, or as you implied in your first post, a closet homosexual. I don't fear that much, I know who and what I am already.

Oh, insults, namecalling, cursing and all caps, you lose.

Re:Lesson Learned

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh for crying out loud: It's not about being PC. It's about using old, tired, irrelevent, comparisons. And it's about not taking the clue when freely given to you.

Name calling and all caps? After this time, you expect any reasonable person to be patient? After this time you STILL think it's about "being PC"?

Grow up. You made a posting that made the entirely irrelevent comparison with "big company's actions" to anal sex. I pointed this out after someone protested this mindless, moronic, posting was "unfairly" moderated. You took offense at that. You've so far taken offense at the notion that your posting might have used a tired analogy, that the analogy might have been inappropriate, that other analogies might have actually been relevent, and worst of all, that someone else might actually judge you on the basis of what you post. You're furious that a moderator, and myself, might think your analogy sucks, simply because you thought it made sense at the time.

Sit back and think about it for a moment: how relevent "girl revealed to be boy and requires anal sex from partner" is "big company works with small one then takes off with the IP"? What relevence does it have? How is it similar?

Not that there's much point in me asking. You'll ignore the point again, and doubtless respond with a huffy "You're just trying to make me PC" comment that ignores the tedious and repetative nature of the homophobic drivel you originally posted, and my complaints thereof. You're so wrapped up in an obsessive need to pretend that your postings are beyond criticism that you can't even see what a redundant piece of homophobic crap that posting was.

Take the clue mate. It's offered in the spirit of ensuring what you post is actually worth reading. If you chose not to, and simply expect people to like your posts simply because you posted them, expect to make people's foes lists, and expect further modding down. As long as you post, you'll have to cope with the idea that people reading your posts might judge you on what you've written.

Out of interest, if you'd used Loose instead of Lose in that post, and LoseNotLooseGuy had responded, would you have spent this much time whining about it too?

What's new here?

[PHAEDRU5]

I mean, M$ has this history of embrace and extend in technology, and embrace and nuke in corporate relationships.

Re:What's new here?

[Ducky]

I mean, M$ has this history of embrace and extend in technology, and embrace and nuke in corporate relationships.

Everything old is new again =)

I'm absolutely amazed how many times, they've done this to corporate entities. And every single time, just as the ink is drying, someone asks, "So, are you afraid MS will take the tech and leave?" And they respond with, "No! That's impossible! They wouldn't do that to us!"

I happen to work for a company where this exact thing transpired at one of their spin-offs a few years back. MS took all the tech and left the spin-off with nothing to productize. Fortunately for the employees, most were folded back into the parent company.

Truely sad they can get away with it. That, and that others are so naive to sign up for this treatment with their track record.

And people wonder why I have such a distaste for Microsoft. And before anyone asks, yes, I'm MS free both at home and at work. =)

-Ducky

Re:What's new here?

[Melantha_Bacchae]

PHAEDRU5 wrote:

> I mean, M$ has this history of embrace and extend
> in technology, and embrace and nuke in corporate
> relationships.

The word you are looking for is "extinguish". Microsoft embraces, extends and extinguishes. Godzilla nukes.

And if Microsoft tries to embrace and extend Godzilla, Microsoft gets nuked. ;)

Still, what happened to Sendo was sad. Yes, they were foolish to believe that Microsoft wouldn't do to them what they have done to others. But Microsoft was still a bad, bad litterbug for being so mean to Sendo.

Godzilla 2000, the Dreaded God! The battle for Earth's future has begun!
The future Millenium threatens.
Godzilla cannot be assimilated by Millenium who would embrace, extend!

Re:What's new here?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's new here is that here we have yet another sucker who walks right up and sticks his head in the noose!

I never cease to be amazed by other companies' business relations with Microsoft. It seems that there are countless businesses out there who will not believe in those reports about Microsoft's predatory business practices unless they can actually experience them personally on a one to one basis!

It will be news the next time too, because of the same amazement factor, "I just can't believe that there is still one more company hiding out there who hasn't got the message yet! How can otherwise intelligent, hard driving bisinessmen be such slow learners?".

this is stale news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am serious. As much as I hate to bitch & complain about Slashdot editors, this has been in reuters news since what 2 days now?

Re:this is stale news...

[craenor]

It's News for Nerds...not Uptodate News for Nerds...jeez *grins*

Officials commented...

[hermescom]

"We did get a little suspicious when MS representatives asked us to just hand over all of our research papers, but then Bill assured us that it was all going to be taken care of, and showed us the contract on his laptop asking us to click I Agree. The thing was so long and boring, and crammed into such a small window, that our lawyers just clicked "I agree" without really reading through the whole thing." Sendo Officials admitted early Thursday.

"We're still looking over the contract to see the ramifications of the "we owe you nothing" clause."

Microsoft officials declined to comment at press time.

Re:Officials commented...

[Jester1023]

Anyone else think this might be the make-or-break for the clickthrough EULA?
IANAL, YMMV, etcetc.

Re:Officials commented...

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that was a joke, right?

Re:Officials commented...

[Jester1023]

Yeah. That's what I get for not putting in the tag.

Re:Officials commented...

[downix]

I'm running into this problem of contracting companies demanding material before the pre-set payment period has arrived. Best thing guys is once the contract is in place, if the material is not core to the contract, give them nothing.

Microsoft's business plan

[pulse2600]

1) Steal someone else's idea
2) Integrate it into their own product
3) Make sure it breaks all the time
4) ??????
5) PROFIT!!!!!

Re:Microsoft's business plan

[oliverthered]

4="Advertise, brand , steel, cheat, lie, lobby, tie your customers in"

It works for most companies/governments/countries, and not just the 'evil' ones.

Re:Microsoft's business plan

[Anonymous Coward]

How does one "steel"?

Re:Microsoft's business plan

[oliverthered]

Mix iron and hot air?

Re:Microsoft's business plan

[c.derby]

actually, in this case "4) ??????" is "4) Charge for support"

Re:Microsoft's business plan

[pulse2600]

What?!?!?!? Troll MY ASS!!!!

and in other news

[slycer9]

someone else sues M$oft for some kind of BBP (Bad Business Practices). Seriously, I'm not attempting to sound like a troll, or be overly inflammatory, but we've seen this over and over. M$oft does something bad, they waste time in court, nothing happens. Yep, they've got to include Java now, but what about all the other points of their recent suits which they've supposedly lost? Nothing's changed, they're still as big a monopoly as before, and do ONLY what they want to do, since they have to answer to ultimately NO ONE. If anyone really wants to affect M$oft, how about this........don't buy their products. A hit in the pocketbook is the only thing they'll ever understand, and that'll never happen until people quit buying their products.

Re:and in other news

[ignipotentis]

This is going to be hard to achieve. The only way people will stop buying their products is if other viable alternatives are offered. I don't mean availible, I mean offered. When was the last time you walked into best buy or circut city and saw a machine with a competative OS ready to go. It's hard enough to find store's other than the Apple Store and CompUSA that carry apples now. There needs to be a large enough presense of alternatives on the shelves before a dent will ever be made.

Re:and in other news

[WildBeast]

Just because everyone is suing them because they're jealous of there success doesn't mean that we have to stop buying there products. All this money going to lawyers is sure a waste though.

Re:and in other news

[oliverthered]

The anti-trust case wasn't about breaking a monopoly, it was about preventing the use of the monopoly to leverage an unfare advantage in another market.

Re:and in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

we've seen this over and over. M$oft does something bad, they waste time in court, nothing happens

Question is, why do people still try to do business with Microsoft ?

By now it should have been obvious that Microsoft isn't a very trustworthy business partner, but for some reason people keep throwing their money and technology at Bill & cronies...

Re:and in other news

[poot_rootbeer]

There's just no pleasing some people. If Microsoft prevails in a court case, you whine that they never get punished. If Microsoft loses, you whine about the other cases where they prevailed.

Oh, and I haven't "bought" any Microsoft product since 1998.

Re:and in other news

[Grishnakh]

Yeah, it really bugs me how people are jealous of Microsoft's success and try to take them down with lawsuits. It's just like how the government was jealous of John Gotti's success so they put him in jail because of some silly "laws" that he broke.

Re:and in other news

[dnoyeb]

Indeed. I always got a strange feeling when I would read "illegal use of monopolistic power." Seemed to imply that the monopoly itself was not a problem.

The White House stands in contradiction with itself when it claims that greed is a fundamental requirement of Capitalism (contrary to Christianity), and then expects corporations to play fair??

Re:and in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

If Microsoft loses, you whine about the other cases where they prevailed.

The original poster wasn't whining about that, but that when MS loses, the remedies have no effect, since MS seems free to ignore the parts it doesn't like.

Re:and in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Well not to troll or do the evil commy thing, but

christianity basicly communism.

very briefly communism is about giving and supporting others (each to his need and ability) sound christian to you?

Capitilism requires selfishness(pick you favorite deadly sin) to some extent, otherwise is just slips into communism.

Libra capitilists will say 'do unto others as you would have others .....', but this requires a sence of self-fullfilment (we are all equal) and the rejection of charity, which is the oposite of christian teachings, otherwise it slips into communism.

Capitilism is a breakdown of feudalism, basicly the redistribution of 'wealth' to everyone, and then set the ball rolling again.

Feudalism came out of land ownership laws and was pushed through europe along with christianity. Ritiousness was used as form of protectionism for the land-lords, kings &co and kept the surfs down.

Prior to that europe was mainly anarchic, and prior to that more communist than anything else.

So yes the basis of capitilism isn't christian, it's fuedalism which was pushed through with christianity, most companies would like a corporate state which is essensially feudal.

And yes communism has been tried for several thousand years and worked quite well thankyou.

No flames please, sensible corrections are ok.

Re:and in other news

[oliverthered]

better the devil you know, then the devil you don't.

Re:and in other news

[gilesjuk]

That's the whole problem, if there is a viable alternative then Microsoft will buy the company.

We've seen it time and time again, currently they're looking to buy Rational and Macromedia.

Re:and in other news

[jvj24601]

That's the whole problem, if there is a viable alternative then Microsoft will buy the company.

This is where GNU actually makes sense. Write a viable alternative using the GPL, and even if Microsoft buys out the company, the source will still be available for someone to download, compile, edit, and even start another company with.

Re:and in other news

[bergeron76]

Maybe I'm behind the curve here, but is there anything that's preventing OS X from running on ix86? I know that OS X is build on FreeBSD and FreeBSD can run on multiple platforms. As such, if Apple released OS X for ix86 wouldn't that _truly_ make a dent and expedite the [IMHO, inevitable] paradigm shift from windows? Granted Apple might lose _somewhat_ in hardware sales, but wouldn't they make much more in software sales of a superior OS?

Re:and in other news

[Malcontent]

Even though your post is offtopic I'll answer it anyway.

If an entity (a person or a business) breaks many laws they should be punished for all of them. If they get away with one or two then justice is not served.

Re:and in other news

[dnoyeb]

I personally do not label communism bad by default. Though I disagree with the ban all religions attitude of USSR. I don't think Capitalism was based on Christianity, but the politicians like to act as if they are not athiest but Christians. But they contradict themselves when they preach the greed mantra.

No, I dont think selfishness is required for capitalism. One can be charitable without the law mandating it. No laws have mandated greed, but so many are greedy. The greed does not make this capitalism any more than charity makes a system communism.

Re:and in other news

[billatq]

Maybe I'm behind the curve here, but is there anything that's preventing OS X from running on ix86? I know that OS X is build on FreeBSD and FreeBSD can run on multiple platforms. As such, if Apple released OS X for ix86 wouldn't that _truly_ make a dent and expedite the [IMHO, inevitable] paradigm shift from windows? Granted Apple might lose _somewhat_ in hardware sales, but wouldn't they make much more in software sales of a superior OS?

Actually, there isn't really anything, darwin will actually build on x86 systems and run. Then it would be a matter of recompiling all the other code, i.e. aqua, etc. on an x86 machine. However, Apple choses not to do this and for good reason. They don't want to go head to head with microsoft, yes, but also they don't want to jeopardize macintosh hardware sales. This really is where they make most of their money and also helps minimize piracy. If any guy can go buy cheap ia32 hardware and then throw OS X on there, then people won't be as inclined to purchase the, IMHO, overpriced Apple hardware. However, I do agree--it would be damn cool. :)

Re:and in other news

[operagost]

According to antitrust law, a monopoly is not illegal. However, attempting to maintain it is. Most economists support the theory that monopolies occur "naturally", but they shouldn't last forever unless heavily regulated to avoid abuse.

Microsoft is a bunch of thieves

[Anonymous Coward]

.

First they steal BASIC

Then they steal DOS

Then they steal Windows

Now they steal IP Smartphone

wtf gives

.

Re:Microsoft is a bunch of thieves

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed OS2 (aka win XX )

Re:You know...

[oliverthered]

wait for 2.4.21 if our using USB, otherwise 2.4.19 is good. check out the change logs to see if there are any issues.

I would suggest the CK patchset for the 2.4 series.

or maybe 2.6.3-4 (I expect any incompatabilitys in common software will have been resolved by then and any binary drivers will have been updated)

I hope that was your question?

It's not stealing

[ACNiel]

They still have the IP, nobody took it from them, yadda yadda yadda.

Re:It's not stealing

[bwalling]

They still have the IP, nobody took it from them, yadda yadda yadda.

take verb - to get into one's hands or into one's possession, power, or control

steal verb - to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as an habitual or regular practice

Just because Sendo still have a copy does not mean it was not taken or stoeln. IP is something that can be possessed by more than one party. That does not mean that it cannot be taken or stolen.

Definitions taken from Merriam Webster

Re:It's not stealing

[ACNiel]

Note the yadda yadda yadda.

I was being snide toward all the stupid music pirates that believe since the music still exists that it isn't stealing.

Copyright violations isn't stealing like Manslaughter isn't murder. It is a specific form of the crime, not a different crime, but all the pirates think that if they somehow call it something else it isn't as bad.

Re:It's not stealing

[sheldon]

Obviously you've missed all the discussions on slashdot about Napster, open source, piracy, etc.

He was clearly being sarcastic.

Re:It's not stealing

[bwalling]

Obviously you've missed all the discussions on slashdot about Napster, open source, piracy, etc.

No, I read them. There are plenty of people who actually believe those arguments.

Re:It's not stealing

[Dirtside]

but all the pirates think that if they somehow call it something else it isn't as bad.

Not quite. They call it something else because it isn't as bad.

Re:It's not stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's the difference between giving your friends a copy of your Metallica CD, or taking a Metallica CD, erasing all references to "Metallica", adding your name, and selling the CD as your own, maybe throwing in a couple of your own songs.

I wouldn't call either of them "stealing", but the second scenario is not morally defensible, imho.

There was probably also a contract involved, not sure about the details though. It's not quite the same when two companies enter a signed agreement.

But keep confusing seperate issues if you like, maybe people will believe you after you repeat it long enough (that's the record industry's plan, anyway).

Re:It's not stealing

[cyberformer]

Many /. posters believe that intellectual property is a flawed notion, or at least has got out of conntrol over the last few years. However, claming somebody else's IP without permission is still a crime (except in the case of fair use), and Microsoft does not hesitate to use the law against comapannies or ididividuals that infringe on its IP by, for example, making illegal copies of Windows. It's only fair that Microsoft be held to the same standards as everyone else.

If true, this is actually much more serious than most IP infringement, because it also involves plagiarism and industrial espionage. It's as if some other company hacked into Microsoft's servers, downloaded the Windows source code, edited it to remove all the copyright messages and other text that refereced Microsoft as the authors, then started selling its own version of Windows.

Of course, Sendo could be lying. Even Bill Gates is innocent until proven guilty.

Re:It's not stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because Sendo still have a copy does not mean it was not taken or stoeln.

Whatever you say, Lars.

Re:It's not stealing

[shepd]

>but all the pirates think that if they somehow call it something else it isn't as bad.

They simply expect it to be called by what it is: Copyright Violation. They don't call parking in a handicapped zone dismemberment, and people shouldn't call Copyright Violation stealing.

This has been hashed out so much it isn't funny. The difference is clear, even in your definition. Slash-lawyers have even discussed this. They've even, to a certain degree, agreed with me.

Pirates using P2P, etc. never purport to give money to the music companies -- it is clear they are too cheap to buy CDs. They try to keep the original names on all the songs they download. They usually don't claim them as their own.

I see nothing stolen. I see no loss, apart from a ding in the goodwill between music companies, the artists and the consumers.

Show me a loss and I'll call it stealing. But in the case of a home user illicitly downloading an album for the heck of it, up to now I see no loss. No loss of ownership (ie: The music hasn't had the author's name intentionally removed), no loss of funds (prove the person would pay for the music if you feel differently), no loss of music (they still have their copies), and no loss of value (the CD still sells for $20, wether it is pirated once or a million times). I see only a loss of ego, which, my friend, is something that at best comes under libel or slander, and since piracy is neither, the law doesn't define it as stealing, and neither do most people when presented with this argument.

Note I don't cover fraud and misrepresentation, two totally separate things from Johnny pirating a Metallica CD from the 'net.

I'm willing to discuss this, but you're going to have to find a better comparison than manslaughter, because by your terms, manslaughter is the accidental stealing of the life of another. And if stealing is to be so watered down, then perhaps we all steal. Do you pay for the air you breathe? Are you on welfare? Is your home made of wood? Does your car burn gas? It's all stealing when you paint the word with such a broad brush. And when one waters down the language by overdefining a term to the point of it being non-sensical, I put it to you that the word is about as useful and about as important as set; ie: alone it means nothing, and it requires a qualifier to tell people what, exactly, the meaning you are trying to convey is.

Is the meaning of steal one of "he's a horrible person who would take the boots off a dead man", or is the meaning to be "he's less than good because he didn't give back the $10 bill the cashier mistook as a $5 bill". If it is the second, I put it to you that I don't care. Call me a stealing man, then, because, by golly, I "stole" American satellite TV for a long time in Canada (not right now, of course, I quit at the end of spring for good reasons ;-).

Of course, your definition of "stealing" doesn't cover that little conundrum, does it? That is, taking that which is allowed to be taken, doesn't deprive anyone, and has a proven value of $0, yet which is still something that the owner doesn't wish for you to take.

[ I have more conundrums that the word stealing can't cover, but piracy does, if you care to enquire. Most fun, trying to redefine the English language... ]

(Don't take it personally, but hey, I do to a certain degree, because your definition covers me, although it isn't correct, IMHO ;-)

Re:It's not stealing

[ACNiel]

If you take a $10 bill that a cashier has mistaken for a smaller bill, and you realize it, then you have stolen.

Technically, you have stolen money if you find it lieing on the street, and claim it as yours, even though you know it not to be. You are required to report it, and wait a certain amount of time for it to be claimed by its rightful owner before claiming possesion.

Stealing Cable is also stealing.

Taking something that doesn't EXPLICITLY belong to you, whether it be physical goods or some other sort of proerty... say intellectual property.

Copyright Violation is a specific form of stealing.

Re:It's not stealing

[shepd]

>Stealing Cable is also stealing.

You didn't answer my question.

Stealing cable is stealing because you are using their resources without compensating them. It is no different than tapping the telephone switch.

However, with a purchased satellite receiver I can receive satellite signals that they send to me. These satellite signals are present wether or not I use them, and absolutely no cost is incurred to the satellite company. This practice of satellite piracy was legal for decades in my country, and the value of the signal has been decided to be of absolutely no value by a judge in my country.

Explain how that is theft/stealing, my watching such a signal with a purchased receiver.

You have not yet.

>If you take a $10 bill that a cashier has mistaken for a smaller bill, and you realize it, then you have stolen.

Not in my country. In my country, and most likely yours, it is the onice (sp?) of the cashier to provide you with correct change. Any mistakes done by them, either monetary or in product nature that are a benefit to yourself are their fault. It is up to you to decide if you want to return any extra benefits.

>Technically, you have stolen money if you find it lieing on the street, and claim it as yours, even though you know it not to be. You are required to report it, and wait a certain amount of time for it to be claimed by its rightful owner before claiming possesion.

Again, special "finders keepers" type laws do exist on items that are unclaimable, such as small change found on the streets. I'd look them up but I'm not a lawyer and I'm tired of debating this topic, because I'm right, because there can be no answer to my satellite TV enigma that leads to stealing.

Like I said, go ahead and ask, I have many more unsolvable (up to now by the slashdot crows) piracy isn't stealing enigmas for you. Perhaps you can be the first to explain the loss incurred by the form of satellite piracy I have explained to you.

Boxing Day?

[Etrigan_696]

Love everyone on "Boxing Day"....?
I thought it was "International Beat The Shit Out Of Everyone You See" day....
Oops...Oh well, looks like all my Cow-Orkers got their birthday spankings a little early this year....and in the face.

Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[burgburgburg]

Are there any small companies that MS has had dealings with that they haven't royally screwed over? Either directly stealing their work or after working "with" them, coming out with a competing product (with borrowed IP) that severely undercut them?

It just seems like the first day MS approaches you is the day you should start preparing the lawsuit against them.

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[leandrod]

> any small companies that MS has had dealings with that they haven't royally screwed over?

Not only small. IBM, Sybase, Orange... I think even Spyglass was not so small at the time.

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[Gaetano]

I think Executive Software is still doing quite well. They had their NTFS disk defragmenter software bundled with windows 2000. I'm not sure if windows XP uses it. But the company still looks like its doing well and I havn't heard any complaints from them, although I havn't used it since I bought a mac. :)

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[questionlp]

Microsoft includes a fairly stripped down version of the disk defragmenter software that Executive Software produces and it does have it's limitations (like not being able to defrag system files, the master file tables nor the paging files, unable to defrag NTFS partitions with a cluster size of over so many Kbytes, etc.) There are many times that I wish I had the full version of their defrag tool at times since some of the database servers that I work with have fairly large file system cluster sizes which cannot be defragged.

The Backup tool included in Windows 2000 and XP are both developed by Veritas and they are doing fairly well... though they like to change their product grouping and strategies about as often as CA does. Just like the included defrag tool, Backup is fairly functional but still doesn't compare to the full blown Backup Exec counterpart.

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[CodeShark]

Stac (Electronics?). They tried, lost, and had to pay a rather large court settlement... Possibly Foxpro, which they bought lock stock and barrel, and maybe Visio -- same thing. Lessee now, companies screwed by M$ after potentially doing business with Mr. Gates, et. al? Here's a few 'slightly' larger companies that come to mind: Lotus, Novell, WP, Corel, Apple, IBM, Sun, Sybase, Intuit, Adobe, etc.

Hell, if I were a class action attorney right now, I'd be looking to plunder the M$ war chest based on a probable pattern of deception where "partnering with Microsoft" is concerned.

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[mkendall]

Are there any small companies that MS has had dealings with that they haven't royally screwed over?

The Hotmail guys did fairly well. The original small group of owners walked away with circa $700m IIRC.

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[HeUnique]

Few years ago there was an Israeli start-up company who was working on a streaming video product - VDO.Net..

Microsoft invested in them $18 million, and after a year Microsoft released a competing product and killed VDO.Net product...

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[SN74S181]

I thought Spyglass got screwed mostly by Netscape. Didn't Netscape run off with the source code for Mosaic, close it tight as a drum, and extend/embrace it loudly?

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape ripped off the U of Illinois. Spyglass was formed to make sure that didn't happen again.

MS signed a percentage royalty with Spyglass and then stared to ship IE for free.

Spyglass eventually sued them and settled for $20M or so.

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape screwed over Spyglass by not charging anything for Netscape 1.0 while Netscape was trying to get marketshare and Spyglass was trying to sell its browser engine.

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[dillon_rinker]

a rather large court settlement

Rethink that statement. The settlement was about $100 million in a year that Microsoft had revenues of about $2 billion - see here for reference. That's about 5% of their annual revenue. That's like a $100 speeding ticket for someone earning $20,000 annually. It's like having $50,000 in income and paying $2,500 in taxes. It's like spilling one mouthful from a can of beer.

BTW, I can no longer find Stac Electronics on the web. I doubt that the cash settlement meant much to them. Microsoft, on the other hand, now has a cash pool of something like $42 billion. They could afford to lose $100 million 400 times.

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[leandrod]

> Netscape screwed over Spyglass by not charging anything for Netscape 1.0 while Netscape was trying to get marketshare and Spyglass was trying to sell its browser engine.

I do not call that screwing, but competition. Now AOL charges nothing for Mozilla, yet no one says they screw MS who charges for MS WXP.

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[CodeShark]

Stac basically took themselves out of business following their win in court, as there was no need for disk doubling software given the exponential increase in disk storage capacities. You're right about M$ resources, but I wouldn't mind seeing them embroiled in another essentially unwinnable case -- based on their illegal monopoly practices, how much damage should they pay. Billions seem appropriate, ya'think?

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[dillon_rinker]

Billions in criminal penalties to be paid to non-profit IT industry groups that Microsoft has no influence over...the only one that comes to mind is the FSF =)

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do a search @ yahoo on getting in bed with Microsft and see the results .... Its a can change a company...

Trusting MicroSoft

[Col. Klink (retired)]

I hope ajp is reading this. In the MS .net vs Mono article, he wrote:

Microsoft has already written .NET for another platform (Rotor, for BSD.) And Microsoft has communicated with Miguel many times with regards to Mono. An interview with him on the topic is hosted on MSDN! This does not appear to be a prelude to a lawsuit.

MicroSoft did a lot more than "communicate" with Sendo.

Re:Trusting MicroSoft

[ajp]

Yes, they did a lot more than "communicate" with Sendo. I'm not terribly familiar with the details of this issue as opposed to the issue I commented on: Mono. You'll note that I haven't posted with regard to Sendo. I have little use for internet cell phones and such nonsense.

The rest of this post is cut&paste from the Mono FAQ. Maybe if you inform yourself of a few facts before posting you won't seem like such a zealous idiot. I'm not posting to convince people like you that Microsoft is a fantastic social force. I'm posting to provide a little bit of reality to these discussions. It just so happens that the MS topics are so often the ones in the worst need of a reality check.

Question 35: Is Microsoft helping Ximian with this project?

There is no high level communication between Ximian and Microsoft at this point, but engineers who work on .NET or the ECMA groups have been very friendly, and very nice to answer our questions, or clarify part of the specification for us.

Microsoft is interested in other implementations of .NET and are willing to help make the ECMA spec more accurate for this purpose.

Ximian was also invited to participate in the ECMA committee meetings for C# and the CLI.

Question 36: Is Microsoft or Corel paying Ximian to do this?

No.

Question 37: Do you fear that Microsoft will change the spec and render Mono useless?

No. Microsoft proved with the CLI and the C# language that it was possible to create a powerful foundation for many languages to inter-operate. We will always have that.

Even if changes happened in the platform which were undocumented, the existing platform would a value on its own.

Re:Trusting MicroSoft

[Kunta Kinte]

I hope ajp is reading this.

Yeah, and I was one of the poor saps trying to convince him otherwise.

Why go into a business relationship with Microsoft with (i) these kinds of legal unknowns and (ii) their record on the matter?

Reminds of the Simpsons episode I saw a while back where Lisa is conducting an experiment; Which is smarter, Bart or a Hamster. The hamster tries to get at some food gets electrocuted twice and thus gives up. Bart continualy gets shocked but reaches for the food ad infinitum.

Re:Trusting MicroSoft

[Col. Klink (retired)]

The point here is that Sendo and MS had a formal business relationship. When Sendo found it couldn't get what it needed from MS, they parted ways, only to find that MS had stolen from Sendo.

The whole point of the .NET vs Mono article was that Mono faces an uphill battle. They don't even have so much as any formal working relationship, and (as the original article mentioned):

Mono also implements parts of .NET that have NOT been submitted to ECMA and ISO standards. Those parts of Mono lack even the protection for IP infringement with re-implementation that ISO documentation licensing implies.

Dealing with MS, even when you think you're getting some great deal, has consistently been proven to be dangerous proposition.

Re:Trusting MicroSoft

[haggar]

Maybe if you inform yourself of a few facts before posting you won't seem like such a zealous idiot.

And with this ad hominem attack you have quickly disqualified yourself and your posts, in my eyes. If you attack the person instead of sticking to the issue, you show that you lack confidence in your own arguments. I have learned to trust this simple rule: if someone attacks the person (usually slandering him/her, like you did), his/her arguments are weak and the person attacked is usually right.

Re:Trusting MicroSoft

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no high level communication between Ximian and Microsoft at this point, but engineers who work on .NET or the ECMA groups have been very friendly, and very nice to answer our questions, or clarify part of the specification for us.

And why wouldn't they? The Mono people are helping Microsoft increasing their dominance of the world computer market for free. The Mono people are, to use a famous phrase, useful idiots.

Profiting with Microsoft

[Randolpho]

1) Make deal with Microsoft. 2) Get screwed by Microsoft. 3) ??? 4) Profit!

Re:Profiting with Microsoft

[dark-nl]

1) Make deal with Microsoft
2) Get screwed by Microsoft
3) Sell company to Microsoft
4) Profit!

Of course, sometimes this backfires, in which case you start a new company and go back to step 1.

also the register

[DZign]

The Register also had an article about this on monday..

Yawn

[webword]

This is news? Microsoft is constantly battling people in court! This is Just Another Lawsuit, folks. By the way, if you are interested, take a look at Computerworld's excellent coverage of Microsoft's legal battles:

Microsoft's Legal Battles

Re:Yawn

[NineNine]

Every Fortune 500 company is constantly in court. That's why "corporate lawyers" exist. I would guess that most companies the size of Microsoft have hundreds if not thousands of lawyers working for them full time. Jesus, not even the Wall Street Journal reports on every little piddling lawsuit that every single Fortune 500 company is involved in.

Re:Yawn

[HowlinMad]

Yes, this is news. You are correct in the fact that Microsoft is battling people in court all of the time, but this is a new case. That is why it is news. Now if this was an article about the anti-trust trial, that may not be news, unless there was new information about it. Thats what makes it news, the new info - a new company taking MS to court.

Re:Yawn

[leandrod]

Every Fortune 500 company is constantly in court.

Yet bad companies do get sued more often than ones that still try to do good. That is, they would if there were still companies trying to do good, which I do not rule out but seriously doubt.

ot even the Wall Street Journal reports on every little piddling lawsuit that every single Fortune 500 company is involved in.

This is not any Fortune 500 company, but a high-visibility one.

This is not only a high-visibility Fortune 500 company, but one with a bad enough history.

This is also a mean, high-profile big company that happens to be in direct, ruthless, dishonest competition with the main public of Slashdot, that is, free software hackers, users and friends.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose you are right. However, it doesn't seem to news worthy of Slashdot. Then again, around the holidays there isn't much to talk about. It just seems like a waste to me. I agree with webword.

Re:Yawn

[dillon_rinker]

True, but I don't think it's "news for nerds" when Mutual of Omaha or Razorblades, Inc. sues or gets sued.

Re:Yawn

[SN74S181]

This is not any Fortune 500 company, but a high-visibility one.

This is not only a high-visibility Fortune 500 company, but one with a bad enough history.

This is also a mean, high-profile big company that happens to be in direct, ruthless, dishonest competition with the main public of Slashdot, that is, free software hackers, users and friends

You're talking about Oracle?

Re:Yawn

[leandrod]

> You're talking about Oracle?

Could be. Could you elaborate?

I know that Oracle wants us to forget about the relational model, its history and creators; and that it refuses to comply with ISO SQL. What other crimes they have on them?

Same reason they do business with Wal-Mart

[eaddict]

they have hopes of making it BIG with the BIGgest beast on the block. They don't think they will get screwed over... and when they do, they seem surprised. Working with MS and WM are like replying to MLM schemes on the net. Over and over people are warned about internet scams but "it will never happen to me!" Yeah right. MS and WM just do it on a corporate scale.

Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

Bash Microsoft : Whore Karma!

Post AC : (-1, Troll)

Re:You know...

[craenor]

Boy some Moderator woke up in a cranky mood today when you get +1 troll for slamming Microsoft over their business practices. Go ahead, mod me down some more, I have Karma to burn.

Old vs New Advice

[ackthpt]

Old advice:
Talk softly and carry a big stick.

New advice:
Be huge, take IP, run the little guy down with your army of lawyers.

Not saying this is happening, but it's certainly a familiar pattern with Microsoft.

IP is bad

[alen]

Information wants to be free. Sendo should have shared their work with the world so people can make products on it, others would improve it etc.

M$ screws someone

[Tom]

film at 11

Why don't we just have a weekly "screwed by M$ this week" special, like the slashback? Would help condense a lot of stories, ranting and general anti-M$ flaming into a few places.

Re:M$ screws someone

[CrazyDuke]

Hrm..in the spirit of fuckedcompany.com, how about "fuckedbyms.com?"

Re: M$ screws someone

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, you could probably make a website out of this
www.fuckedbymicrosoft.com or something
wonder why someone hasn't already

Hypocracy

[io333]

Where are all of the "information wants to be free" folks now? What, anyone should be able to take and use any information any way they want so long as they are not Microsoft?

Re:Hypocracy

[hkmwbz]

Excuse me? Who is the hypocrite here?

Should Microsoft be able to take and use any information just because they are big enough to get away with it? Should they be able to do it when they want all information to belong to them, and not be free?

The "information wants to be free" people will accept free information for Microsoft the day Microsoft agree to share their information.

Of course one shouldn't let Microsoft get away with this when they are in a situation where they basically dominate the desktop market and are trying to use this to take over other markets as well.

So who is the hypocrite? The ones that want everyone to have the same possibilities, or the one who is wondering why the "information wants to be free" people aren't supporting the convicted monopolist who is using this for their own gain - as usual? The one who wants information to be made free for Microsoft so they can continue to screw over others?

The "information wants to be free folks" support people who work to the best interest of everyone, sharing information. Of course they won't support a monopolist which tries to screw others to strengthen its own position in as many markets as possible.

Re:Hypocracy

[fermion]

This is pretty much a troll, as this has nothing to do with free software, MS is not likely to open source this code, or give it away for no cost.

Do even though the parent is clueless, lets take a look at the "hypocracy". I think the basic concept is that all information has a tendency to become free, just like all matter has a tendency to become disordered, and we as humans, if we want to protect our information, must do intentional things to keep information not free.

It is a long way to go from this to justifying MS appropriation of others IP and selling products based upon it. For instance, most of us think we have the right to make copies of music and videos for ourselves and friends. How many friends is a contentious issue, but that tends to be quibble. However, most would say making copies of music we do not own or have the right to, and then selling it is on the illegal side. With the free software issue, only MS and other radicals would argue that all software should be one way or the other. In either case, MS has no problem taking, but want to control what everyone else has.

MS has good conmen?

[fermion]

On one hand this is nothing interesting. Companies enter into these type of agreements all the time, often with the intention of gaining expertise that will allow them, in the fullness of time, to compete. However, normally both parties are required to fulfill some obligation complete the contract. Several issues ago, Foreign Affairs has a very good article on this type of business practice and it's benefits to free enterprise.

The interesting thing is that MS seems to be an expert at entering into these sorts of strategic alliances without incurring any burden of responsibility. In this case MS took the technology, took the manufacturing rights, and left Sendo with nothing. One would think the contract would have prevented this, or specified financial consequences if MS did such a thing. They certainly have a history of destroying partners, and it seems like prudent partner would take this history into account. The MS lawyers and sales people must be excellent con men if they can routinely negotiate deals like this.

Well they are gona need all the money they can get

[inteller]

Cause after leaving the MS camp to go join that crap Symbian stuff. Think about it:
Superior tech always available first (Netscape, Palm, etc)
Microsoft product sucks at first and everyone abandons them leaving them as the only ones to benefit when they finally work the bugs out (admit it, this always happens)

How to learn from Microsoft

[bharlan]

Here's something I wrote in 1999 that still seems to apply.

If you are a monopoly, then everyone is a competitor. The key technology is the written contract, not software.

• Any contract worth signing must have a booby-trap for the other guys.
• Identify a hole in your market. Find a hungry company attempting to fill this hole, and let them have your exclusive endorsement for a few years. In return, they will sign a contract with a suicide clause. When you are ready to absorb this market into your own product line, you exploit the clause and they die.
• If new technology moves too fast, then you must form a strategic alliance. Find other competitors with no interest in the new technology and get them to sign contracts endorsing your incompatible, vapor-ware alternative. You kill the new technology and burn the other competitors at the same time.
• If a competing technology succeeds anyway, then remember that a monopoly has its privileges. Distribution channels must sell your weak products if they want the strong ones. Prevent the distribution of competing products. Such contracts are always confidential.
• Non-disclosure agreements are an end in themselves. Anyone who asks about your long-term plans is a potential threat. Get such parties to sign agreements not to discuss the issue with anyone else. Tell them how you will vaporize all competing technologies they may have considered. They can't check your story with anyone else. They can't complain if they base decisions on misinformation.

Amazingly, you can usually find companies to agree to these contracts for nothing. They'll sign just to be your friend.

Re:You know...

[leandrod]

wait for 2.4.21...

People do not install Linux the kernel, they install a distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system.

That said, the answer depends on what he wants to do. One of the nice things with free software is that you have alternatives geared to several ends.

My IP Problems...

[LordYUK]

the other night I had a problem with my routers IP... I called tech support and they had me /release and /renew it. maybe that would help. ((covers ears so as to not hear 1,000,000 geeks groan at once for such bad geek humor))

bill & stevIE's xmas shopping tabs calculated

[Anonymous Coward]

said to be weigh up in the billyuns.

that doesn't even include amouNTs ?paid? for BAD ?pr?, false advertising, bribery, coercion, gangsterious softwar asphixiations, etc...

a little green are we robbIE? how much djia donate?

wake up J., the "smoking gun" is poiNTed at you.

Ohh yeah???

[HowlinMad]

Information wants to be free

Can I have your credit card number then? I bet its yearning to be free with all of the information. ;)

Re:Ohh yeah???

[alen]

That's the usuall /. mantra around here. But to a lot of people it only applies if the IP belongs to a big company like IBM or MS. If it's a small company against a big company then IP has to be protected.

Re:Ohh yeah???

[Ironica]

That's the usuall /. mantra around here. But to a lot of people it only applies if the IP belongs to a big company like IBM or MS. If it's a small company against a big company then IP has to be protected.

Seems the point is that all IP should have the same protection. Our current laws give huge advantages to big companies with lots of lawyers. If we want to change *all* the laws, fine... until then, the big companies should be held to the same standards that they hold others to.

Besides, MS didn't steal Sendo's IP in order to make it publicly available. They stole it in order to keep it and make money off of it themselves. Not exactly an action that bears any relationship to free software concepts.

advertising

[circusboy]

I don't know if it is just cosmic irony or what, but the lower banner ad on this story when I first looked, said "get Microsoft behind your business..."

did someone plan that?

jealous whiners

[Anonymous Coward]

so, you're saying that of the 10 billyuns in holidaze proformas "reported" buy m$n.con, was mostly buy the "magic" of felonious stock markup m$accouNTing (we will go) FraUDs, except for what bill & stevIE got?

of those so-called 10 billyuns, how much of IT do you think is unrepayable debt (except what bill & stevIE got), couNTdead as real ?money?

Making deals with MS...

[spanky1]

...is like making a deal with the Borg. They will take advantage of you until you are no longer needed. Then you're screwed. The Bill Gates Borg picture started out as a joke but seems to be more and more fitting each day.

Reminds me of that Voyager episode called "Scorpion" where the crew tried to make a deal with the Borg. Of course the Borg tried to screw them over in the end. The only good thing about it is it brought us Seven of Nine. :)

sleep with the devil

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you sleep with the devil, expect to wake up with a sore ass!!!

Re:sleep with the devil

[Anonymous Coward]

Sleep with devil, turn your back on devil,
get screwed by devil, have sore ass!

Your post rewritten:

[Randolpho]

1) Bash Microsoft
2) ???
3) Karma!

What's the beef?

[Mundocani]

Not to be too quick to defend Microsoft (certainly not on /.), but the article didn't actually given any details on Sendo's complaint. What is it that Microsoft has "stolen" from them? For all we know right now, it's something stupidly obvious like "a method for simulating pushbuttons on an LCD" or "pressing talk without entering a number automatically redials the last number called". There's probably more to it than this, but all these posts are so quick to assume Microsoft's guilt without having any substantial information other than the fact that a suit has been filed. If I were Sendo, I'd probably claim Microsoft was oppressing me too -- hell, everyone assumes it anyhow so what's there to lose? Even the article's quote about the case "having merit" came from Sendo themselves. Well of course *they're* going to say that! I'd be much more impressed if somebody independent said the same thing.

Yeah, Microsoft's business practices are shady at best, but we don't have any substantial information about Sendo's claims at all right now, so it seems foolish to forming opinions so prematurely.

Re:What's the beef?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe its the smoking gun and the corpse that has you confused? Regardless I would like a little of whatever it is that you are taking.

Re:What's the beef?

[HamNRye]

Regardless of Sendo's complaint, it still falls under the count your fingers after shaking hands with Ballmer thread of Microsoft's past. Perhaps the claims are baseless, but you are still looking at another small company blasted by the Death Star.

The flip side of this is how many of us would have heard of Sendo if not for this?? I'm starting to wonder if the next wave of tech start-ups shouldn't just keep suing each other to generate headlines with their names in 90 point helvetica.

Perhaps these companies have been smoking too much of the wacky weed... I leave you with a quote from Frank Black:
"alone with the beast and my skull choppers
now i'm just a name dropper
and i'm bust in these deep slumberweeds
stone was in me"

~Hammy

Re:What's the beef?

[Mundocani]

What smoking gun? What corpse? All I see so far is a failed business deal and a company who initially claimed one reason ("no source code access") now claiming another ("they gave away our secrets"). This whole thing smells funny to me, but it's neither from rotting corpses nor what's in my pipe.

Which Linux version?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which Linux version should I install now to escape the hell that is M$?

I've been running Linux since the SLS distro back in 1994. I used to be a die-hard Slackware user for a number of years after SLS and have tried Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo, Lycoris and most recently Xandros. No "Lindows"... sorry. After each new one I try, I keep going back to SuSE and just last week upgraded from SuSE 8.0 to 8.1 and like it very much. I think it's about the most highly refined geekhead Linux there is. It may be a bit overwhelming for someone who isn't a total Linux/unix gearhead, but if you're looking for the most plug-n-play simple to install and use desktop Linux that can also run a lot of Win32 apps under Crossover Office/Wine from the very start, then I'd have to suggest Xandros which is very slick and complete for a 1.0 release.

Is Sendo giving the money back?

[sheldon]

The fact that Microsoft invested money in Sendo doesn't make this all clear cut. Especially given the reason why Microsoft invested money was nullified when Sendo dropped out of the market.

I guess I'm just wondering if Sendo intends on giving the money back? If not, could not Microsoft simply consider it payment for the disagreement?

List of past cases?

[leandrod]

Does anyone have a list of past cases of MS screwing people and getting away with that?

Just for starters:

Apple: Rip-off
BeOS: Exclusive OEMs
IBM: OS/2
NeXT: Cairo hype
Orange: Smartphone cannon fodder
Sendo: Rip-off
Spyglass: Mosaic & MS IE
Sun: Java & C#
Sybase: SQL Server

Re:List of past cases?

[nhavar]

Could you elaborate on these for those of us who are ignorant to the facts of each case.

Re:List of past cases?

[Otis_INF]

Err no. To enlighten you a bit:
Apple: Rip-off
Hardly. Xerox was ripped of by both MS and Apple (and others)

IBM: OS/2
It was a joined effort. MS has worked on OS/2 as well. No-one talks about the fact that IBM used MS' work when selling OS/2

Sendo: Rip-off
This is to be seen. If Sendo signed a contract MS could use the material, Sendo'll stay empty handed. And most of the time when it comes to a Company A sues company B because of IP theft it is basicly regret of company A that they've signed the wrong contract with B.

Sun: Java & C#
Come on... Both have C++ as their predecessor. If you say C# is based on Java, you then claim also that Java is the start of a new, unique path in the languages-tree. But that's not true. Java is based on C++, so C# is also based on C++.

Sybase: SQL Server
Also very wrong. MS and Sybase worked together on SQLServer, using a codebase provided by Sybase. However after 6.0 MS decided to part ways with Sybase, resulting in a 100% rewrite of SQLServer in v7.0.

Besides that, doing business with companies when IP is involved is a thing where you have to keep your IP attorney at hand for most of the time: nail everything off in tight contracts so no-one can fool you, steal your IP or rip you off in the long run. But what happens most of the time is this:

Company A, large big company, decides it's cheaper to work together with company B, small company with some intellectual property A wants. A does a proposal to B, which B rejects because it means B is selling the IP to A for a bargain. A then decides it is perhaps better to work it out in-house, so leaves B alone. B sees its targetmarket soon be transfered to the targetmarket of A, so decides to accept the offer of A. However, after a few years, B regrets this decision and wants to turn back the tables. No can do. Contracts are signed, B should have payed more attention. B can go to court, perhaps A will settle the case for some money to stop the bad press, but that will be all.

A isn't necessarily Microsoft. All big companies have this kind of cases regularly, especially companies who are in markets where having IP is having the advantage over your competitors.

Re:List of past cases?

[sconeu]

Go! Computer - PenPoint OS (ripped off to becom Pen Windows)

Re:List of past cases?

[Rude Turnip]

More details on the BeOS issue from their press release:

MENLO PARK, Calif. -- February 19, 2002 -- Be Incorporated (NASDAQ:BEOS) announced today it has filed suit against Microsoft Corporation for the destruction of Be's business resulting from the anticompetitive business practices of Microsoft. The lawsuit alleges, among other claims, that Microsoft harmed Be through a series of illegal exclusionary and anticompetitive acts designed to maintain its monopoly in the Intel-compatible PC operating system market and created exclusive dealing arrangements with PC OEMs prohibiting the sale of PCs with multiple preinstalled operating systems. Be has retained the law firm of Susman Godfrey L.L.P. on a contingent fee basis to represent Be and to seek recovery of damages for the benefit of the company and its stockholders. The suit has been filed in the United States District Court in San Francisco.

Here is a link to the filing brief (pdf file): http://www.beincorporated.com/msft_complaint.pdf

I *highly* recommend reading the lawsuit filing brief, as it outlines in great detail exactly what MS did to Be, ranging from restrictive OEM deals to manipulation of the market for Be's stock that would make Martha Stewart look like a saint.

Re:List of past cases?

[NullProg]

Four important ones....

3Com - Lan Manger/Netbios was swipped from 3Com.
Stacker - Stolen compression technology, case later settled by MS.
Caldera - DR DOS. Case settled, court records sealed.

IBM - Microsoft stole monopoly power from them back in the early 90's. - :)

Enjoy,

Re:List of past cases?

[Anonymous Coward]

--Apple: Rip-off
--Hardly. Xerox was ripped of by both MS and Apple (and others)

Close. Apple was shown a GUI by Xerox then went back and wrote their own, with various differences/improvements, from scratch. MS convinced (read: extorted) Apple to let them see their code in exchange for writing Word and other apps for it, and then use that code as a basis for their own Windows software. This is one of the main factors in Apple losing its early lawsuits against Microsoft, since MS could say "They gave us the code".

Re:List of past cases?

[alfredo]

Xerox didn't know what they had, and the technology was languishing. Xerox did profit from the deal, of course, so did Apple.

Re:List of past cases?

[spectecjr]

Stacker - Stolen compression technology, case later settled by MS.

Stacker was a PATENT INFRINGEMENT CASE, not a stolen IP case.

here's some words from an
expert in the field of compression and patents:

http://www.ross.net/compression/

" Waterworth patented a LZ77 variant (US Patent 4701745). This algorithm
is generally referred to as as LZRW1, because Ross Williams reinvented
it later and posted it on comp.compression on April 22, 1991. The same
algorithm has later been patented by Gibson & Graybill (US Patent
5049881). The patent office failed to recognize that the same algorithm
was patented twice, even though the wording used in the two patents is
very similar.

The Waterworth patent is now owned by Stac, which won a lawsuit against
Microsoft, concerning the compression feature of MS-DOS 6.0. Damages
awarded were $120 million. (Microsoft and Stac later settled out of
court.) "

From his resume: "Consulting to Microsoft: In 1993 Stac initiated a
software patent lawsuit against Microsoft over the doublespace data
compression feature of MS-DOS 6. As part of its defence, Microsoft
retained me as an expert in text data compression. Tasks involved
searching for prior art and evaluating patents. "

Most importantly, however:

http://www.ross.net/compression/introduction.htm l

"Unfortunately, during this happy rollout, some patents popped out of
the US patent system that cast a shadow over the LZRW series algorithms,
and they became effectively unuseable in any practical application. If
you want to use them in any product (whether free or commercial), you
will have to do some in-depth patent homework and algorithm
development/modification so as to avoid infringement. If you think
that's easy, then you should be aware that Microsoft tried to use an
LZ77/LZRW1/etc variant, specifically designed not to infringe existing
patents, in its MS-DOS V6 operating system, and ended up having to pay
Stac about $80m in the resulting patent lawsuit. For this reason, I
would like to take this opportunity to state that the code provided in
this web (and FTP site) is provided with the intention that it be used
for educational and recreational use only. "

Re:List of past cases?

[leandrod]

> Xerox was ripped of by both MS and Apple

Yes, but MS Win was a direct rip-off of the Apple Macintosh System, not of the Xerox Alto. Perhaps we would have had a better MS WXP now if its ancestry had been more than a toy...

Anyway, the point is that MS built a relationship with Apple, then abused it by doing what it asserted it would not do. Granted they have been prompted by Apple being stubborn about leaving off OEMs MS depended on, such as Compaq.

> It was a joined effort

Yes, but then MS deceived IBM on its commitment to OS/2 until they had MS W16 3.1 ready. Then they refused to make MS W32 an open standard on which OS/2 could compete.

> Come on... Both have C++ as their predecessor.

Agreed, but apart from the common type system C# has little point in existing other than providing MS its own Java competitor geared to keep and foster a preference for the MS W32 OS. Also, MS tried first to create its own Java quirks to the same effect.

> a 100% rewrite of SQLServer in v7.0.

It hardly matters, as by then they had learned all they wanted from Sybase. They sucked all the knowledge they wanted, then dumped their partner. As always.

Re:List of past cases?

[Anonymous Coward]

You left out the DrDOS case where Microsoft deliberately created an incompatability. MS did the same thing with OS/2 later.

Also, what about Stac? MS blatently stole their product and integrated it into DOS 6 as "doublespace". The concession they made in 6.22 to go to an alternate compression method was no concession at all. They had already forced the competition out of business by then.

Re:List of past cases?

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably should read some articles describing the instances you are commenting on... in most cases you missed the actual beef. Here are the most obvious ones:

• OS/2. Was originally a joint effort, but relationship soon turned sour, when Microsoft realised they could just as easily eat IBM's lunch in OS business (ie. improve Windows -- originally thought of as a stop-gap measure before OS/2), instead of working together. Microsoft then start edhuge FUD campaign against various versions of OS/2. Biggest one was before Windows 95 release: 95 was always "being released any day now" (starting from late 94), and it was supposed to do everything OS/2 could, and more. And, they claimed, companies were better wait for W95 instead of buying OS/2, at least so they could do "fair" comparison of products. This when they knew full well their vaporware product was months away, and competing product was a real danger. 95 was released very close to end of 95, without having many of OS/2's key features. MS also made sure OS/2 could not be made compatible with 95, unlike with 3.11; not by not supporting IBM but ensuring it was damn near impossible to support API.
• Sun and Java. Nobody complained about C# looking like a Java clone (I'd consider that evolution, and MS' admission Java is a decent language). Complaints centered around MS' "embrace and extend" strategy, and with MS' refusal to include Java VM with their browser. I'm not commenting on merits of these accusations, just pointing out that you misunderstood the issue. Check out latest industry news regarding related lawsuits; Sun did win some preliminary victory in the case.
• Sybase. My co-worker (a DB expert with 15 years experience) explained the whole story, but basically yes, MS and Sybase had close relationship (Sybase being afraid of Oracle), and MS pulled the good-old "give us your product and we'll steal it" stunt, just like with Stacker (see below) and others. And I understood this is just like what Sendo is claiming. The main issue (in addition to stealing IP) was that MS pretty much stole to Sybase customers. Of course looking back that was Sybase's mistake; Sybase agreed to stop directly selling their product on NT platform and let MS do marketing -- as they were supposed to be partners at that point -- but that, surprise surprise, later on after they split, MS pretty much "stole" the customer base altogether, having the distribution channel and acquired relationship. And based on those, they could rewrite software, keeping customers while rolling out a new product, and laughing all the way to the bank.

Plus, there are some other well-known cases:

• Stacker. "Disk doubler" that MS was to license, but that they actually wrote based on information they obtained from the smaller company. Can't remember details of the trial; perhaps MS paid them off?
• DR DOS vs. MS DOS. Microsoft used lots of dirty tricks at OS level to try to make sure DR DOS could never be used as the DOS below Windows 3. This wasn't just 'accidental' incompability that happened to hurt competitor; it was active deliberate engineering (by perhaps just few engineers, who knows). This should be well documented (as it's the most popular of "MS using dirty tricks" case), check Google for details.

Re:List of past cases?

[NullProg]

Stacker was a PATENT INFRINGEMENT CASE, not a stolen IP case.

Not trying to start a war here, but what is the difference? Companies protect IP through patents.
Stac had a sucessful software product and Microsoft wanted to include the same features with MS DOS without paying fair value for it (or what Stac said fair value was).

They were in negotiations (late 1991) with Stac and willfully included the technology into MS DOS without having an agreement.

An excellent reply by the way, a refreshing change from the normal /. drivel.
A link to the case history is here:

http://www.vaxxine.com/lawyers/articles/stac.htm l

An excellent link to compression patents can be found here:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/compression-faq/part1/s ec tion-7.html

Enjoy,

Re:List of past cases?

[leandrod]

Microsoft Windows was a direct rip-off from Apple, whom Microsoft had befriended by creating applications for their then-nascent platform.

BeOS could not sell their system because MS had exclusivity contracts with OEMs.

IBM codeveloped OS/2 with MS, then the agreement was broken and MS started playing its FUD, exclusive contracts etc.

NeXT had a real industrial strength, OO OS. MS promised that MS WNT was industrial strength, and Cairo would be OO. This, together with exclusive contracts, killed NeXTStep. MS WXP still is not reliable, and Cairo still is not here.

Orange is selling a substandard product that was ripped off from Sendo. MS did not dare sell it under its own brand. Perhaps they will after Orange and others take the flak and correct the bugs.

Sendo has put tremendous effort in making MS WCE useable in a phone, but where denied enough access to source code. Now their work has showed up in HTC.

Spyglass was promised a percentage on MS IE revenue. Then MS IE was bundled with the OS and given away for free, so no revenue to calculate a percentage on.

Sun signed a license agreement with MS in which MS promised to keep Java cross platform. First they tried corrupting Java to make it MS W32-specific, then they stopped distributing it until they could finish their competitor, C#.

Sybase taught MS everything they know about databases, and even shared the source code for their SQL DBMS. MS learned what they could, then broke the partnership.

Other people have added:

Digital Research had the original CP/M, of which MS-DOS was a poor imitation. Later MS played FUD and exclusivity to crush DR-DOS.

Stac Eletronics created the filesystem compression utility when disks were expensive and slow. Microsoft copied parts of Stacker in its Doublespace.

Also mentioned were 3Com (NetBEUI, NetBIOS & SMB), Go!Computing (PenPoint) and Silicon Graphics (OpenGL), but I am not familiar with the details in these cases.

Re:List of past cases?

[nhavar]

Just thoughts... my thoughts... yes I know they'll be unpopular... who cares...

I always understood that NeXT languished because of it being tied to proprietary hardware (ala Apple) and that by the time it ported to x86 the damage was done. Eventually it was bought by Apple and later incorporated to some extent into what is today's OS X. OS X is what some people blame for the failure of BeOS. Some say that BeOS not NeXT should have been the underpinning of OS X. If that would have happened it would have been saved. But Jobs baby was always NeXT. Similar to MS, Apple has never fully fulfilled their promises when it comes to the functionality of their OS. Additionally BeOS spent quite a bit of capital developing proprietary hardware that never panned out as well as marketing to the wrong people (geeks). I'd hardly blame these failures on MS. As for MS stealing from Apple, Apples ideas as it's been said before weren't exactly original (XEROX).

MS did co-develop OS/2 with IBM. The contract was based on KLOC's (Thousand Lines of Code) payment system. Gates thought it unfair that they should get paid less for more efficient "tighter" code. But this is the way that IBM had been doing business for years and no young punk was going to tell them otherwise. OS/2 per contract got released in two forms MS OS/2 and IBM OS/2. Both companies were allowed to distribute the end result. Eventually the partnership disbanded and both companies mutated OS/2 into different directions one becoming NT and the other eventually OS/2 Warp.
IBM did most of the damage to OS/2. Mismarketing mostly as well as the fact that early versions took 12 disks to install and couldn't be installed over the network. Win31 however could be installed via a network and with disks was like 6 or 8 disks I think. People then just like today were more interested in convenience and Win31 happened to fulfill that. The real shame though was that IBM failed to show confidence in it's own product, so instead of installing OS/2 to all of their hardware they came preinstalled Windows. That was a major blow. Everytime I heard someone ask "What about OS/2" someone else would chuckle "Are you kidding, IBM won't even put it on their machines."

SUN licensed Java to MS, MS made proprietary extensions similar in form to MFC and some other conveniences they added to other languages. That part is not really debatable. The kind of FUD part that SUN has been spreading is the "FACT" that MS was required to distribute Java. The agreement that they signed in 1998 stated that MS was allowed to continue carrying all Java developed products created prior to that date. Additionally they were given the OPTION to carry newer Java products should those products conform to the guidelines set by SUN. MS decided not to carry that OPTION and therefore for many years JVM 1.1 was the distributed JVM for MS's OS line. SUN failed to effectively correct this matter through marketing/partnerships. Then as the JVM became more work than it was worth and in light of it's age and MS's own work on a competitor product it was going to be abandoned. The fact is that there are a lot of people out there that like some of the features of JAVA and hated others while still liking a lot of the features of C++, thus the market for C# was born, not created. Then people eager to bash MS were more interested in what MS had to gain from ditching the old worthless JVM than they were interested in why SUN had sat on it's thumbs for four long years. Conspiracy theorists unite.

My thought was that SUN should have made a plugin like Macromedia's Flash/Shockwave and Apple's Quicktime. Any computer I've ever been on if it was missing either product I would get redirected to where the plugin would install and within a few minutes I'm ready to go. I've yet to see this happen in regards to Java. Other companies have been doing it for years, what is SUN doing?

Remember SUN, ORACLE, AOL, IBM, Netscape all these big companies want to be/beat MS. They all have their own agendas, their own FUD machines. And don't delude yourself to think that their FUD machines are any less efficient than MS's FUD machines. They'll lie, cheat and steal their way to the top. They'll fish for evidence, plant it, steal it, engineer it, and hide it when necessary. At the end of the day each company is going to try to make you see that they are the ones being mistreated and stepped on. Each company is going to try to woo you to their side and show you the "evidence" of their mistreatment by someone else. At the end of the day you have to see the things they are trying to distract you from. At the end of the day you have to see that NONE OF THEM give a shit about you or your loyalty. The only thing they care about is that you hate Company-X enough to buy Company-Y's product. It doesn't even matter anymore if Company-Y's product is better - you just have to know that Company-X is evil.

I try to take a more balanced approach. Is MS evil... maybe... in the long run at least as evil as IBM or SUN but not quite as evil as AOL. Is MS responsible for the demise of some companies and or products... maybe... but it's probably closer to 20%MS - 80%Company/Products when it comes to fault. I've seen more ham-handed marketing and ignorant assumptions as well as just shear laziness to think that MS is the cause of ALL these companies woes. These companies should all be trying to better themselves instead of running on personal vendettas. They should be looking inward not outward for improvements. So while we're handing out lawsuits against MS for it's shitty business practices should we be handing out lawsuits against Apple for their shitty business practices during the nineties, or SUN for thumb twidling, or ORACLE for years of vaporware, or Amazon for not making money all those years, or how about suing all those OEMS like Dell, Gateway, Compaq, Acer, NEC, HP, Packard Bell, etc. for making the poor business decisions that gave MS so much power to begin with. Maybe if we taught all those companies the same lesson we want to teach MS, MS wouldn't be such a problem in the future?

Just a thought...

Re:List of past cases?

[leandrod]

You have all the facts right. Yes, MS competitors, including Sun and Oracle (not SUN or ORACLE, these are not acronyms nor abbreviations), have been incredibly stupid, including trying to play MS' game when it is a well-known fact only MS can own its own game. But you fail in interpretation of the facts. Mostly MS competitors have been more stupid, but less dishonest than MS itself. So yes, MS deserves all the lawsuits and actually some punishment too. But no, there is no point in suing someone for stupidity.

Re:List of past cases?

[Ironica]

Apple: Rip-off
Hardly. Xerox was ripped of by both MS and Apple (and others)

Not exactly. Once you say "no, we don't like it, we're not going to use it" it's not really "ripping off" a company to then market your idea somewhere else.

IBM: OS/2
It was a joined effort. MS has worked on OS/2 as well. No-one talks about the fact that IBM used MS' work when selling OS/2

Erm... IBM and MS had a contract to produce OS/2. That contract included clauses about joint marketing, and I think even non-competition agreements. While OS/2 was under development, MS was also developing Windows NT. Not only that, but they were approaching applications developers, telling them that OS/2 was going to bomb, and if they really wanted to get the jump on things, they should be developing for Win NT. Of course, since MS was involved in both projects, the other developers had every reason to believe them. Then OS/2 failed in large part because there was no software for it, and there was for NT.

Re:Well they are gona need all the money they can

[miffo.swe]

Microsoft Bob, Microsoft Network as it was intended (a separate MS network), hailstorm and a slew of other troubled products from MS havent been that successful. They get is "right" sometimes but not because of superior tech, compare IE6 to Mozilla and it should be obvious what happens with MS "innovation" once competition is eliminated.

I would say that almost every single product originating from inside Redmond sucks really hard. only the ones that are bought from the outside is usable.

Should have used DRM...

[ewg]

Sendo should have protected their intellectual property using Digital Rights Management technology. If only they had set the "Do not share with low-cost manufacturers" flag.

Interesting

[Quill_28]

My company has had dealing with Microsoft, yet never had a sale. The reason:

We commonly sell source code to our customers but they usually are limited to a specific product family.

Everytime we deal with them they will not agree the code will turn up in other areas of microsoft, which we deem unacceptable and the deal is off. In our area, MS is not important so it's not a big deal.

I haven't read the article but i wonder how many times, others business "have" to deal with MS overlook things like the above, realize they have been screwed and then sue. Or get greedy for the MS deal, get screwed and then sue. Or maybe just plained got screwed by ole MS.

Or maybe it's all over my head and just business as usual. Yeah that's probably it.

Re:Why do the English have disgusting teeth?

[Gordonjcp]

For the same reason as Americans are disgustingly fat. Great big obese whales, that stink because they're too fat to wash properly. I suppose you could tie one to the bed of one of the pickups they drive around in, and go through a carwash.

Anyway, I thought all Americans had bad teeth and too close together eyes. Maybe that's just one part of America.

Reuters story

[donutello]

Here's the Reuters story on this from a few days ago which contains more information.

"Microsoft's secret plan was to plunder the small company of its proprietary information, technical expertise, market knowledge, customers and prospective customers," the filing said.

So now stealing "customers and prospective customers" is a crime for a competitor to commit? Sounds like a case of another company (hint, Sun) which can't achieve success through selling its product so hopes to achieve it through litigation.

Re:Reuters story

[buss_error]

So now stealing "customers and prospective customers" is a crime for a competitor to commit?

It is if you, through contracts, IP sharing, and business ties, do so to the detriment of the owner of the information.

It's one thing if you and I are in the consulting business in competition, and I get some of your customers by calling around and offering them a better price. It's quite another matter if I bribe your accountant and get a list of all your customers.

What Sendio is saying is that MS invested in the company, signed contracts to develop and market cell phones. In exchange, MS promised Sendio that Sendio would make the phone and software, clear it with the cell system operators (no small task that), in exchange Sendio would get a partnership with MS and profits. Sendio says that instead of honoring that contract, MS gave all the work to Sendio's competitor, MS took a larger slice of the profits, and left Sendio to die because all their hard work was given away.

If this is true, (and I don't know if it is or isn't), then MS has a big problem. If the court gets nasty, they could award Sendio millions and millions, list the phone as pirate technology (and WTO treaty partners would have to forbid importation of the phone), and other things that wouldn't make God Gates happy. In fact, if the court really got vendictive, they can say CE copyrights are null/void, and order MS to release the source code to CE. (Not that it will happen or that anyone would want it anyway.) As always, IANAL. IDEPOOTV. (I don't even play one on TV).

Re:Reuters story

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad you only noticed the last four words of the quote you provided. Take a look at the six words which precede the four of which you think so little.

Microsoft is accused of stealing Sendo's "proprietary information, technical expertise, market knowledge...". All of the foregoing are trade secrets/intellectual property. Sendo's customer and prospective customer lists are almost undoubtedly also trade secrets/intellectual property.

Stealing intellectual property is a real crime. Microsoft aggressively pursues those who steal IP from them or even get close to overlapping into their IP.

And you're full of it re: your Sun reference.

If Microsoft is guilty (my wouldn't we all be surprised if they are) they should pay dearly. Writing a check for a few hundred million dollars certainly won't hurt them but it will annoy them a little.

Re:Reuters story

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense, but... courts slapping any kind of drastic punishmenton Microsoft? In what America do you live?

Re:Reuters story

[buss_error]

Fantisy land, I guess. You have a point there.

Re:Reuters story

[Ironica]

So now stealing "customers and prospective customers" is a crime for a competitor to commit?

Not usually... but it's often breach of contract. At a company I worked for, a group of folks decided to take off and create their own competing company. Now, (1) most of the employees who left had a specific NCA clause in their contracts; (2) they actively recruited current accounts and employees of the original company; (3) they stole equipment and supplies from the original company to get started. In that case, yeah, what they did was definitely suitworthy.

Haven't seen the Sendo contract, so I don't know if they had the sense to put that clause in there. Hopefully...

SENDO Business Plan

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Take Microsoft investment
2) Use money to add Java, delay development
3) Wait over 1 year until Taiwanese clone arrives
4) Cancel contract and sue msft
5) Sell msft IP to monopolist Symbian
6) PROFIT!

Seriously, i never even heard of this company before they started developing a Microsoft Smartphone, they got their opportunity and missed it, now they are whining. I see no reason why they could not have been first.

Anyway, they'll get lots of good PR out of it, fighting the convicted monopolist, while developing a Symbian phone.

Sendo should have thought before signing

[Zenki]

If Sendo had the brains to check out what microsoft does with PocketPC, AutoPC, etc, they would realize that MS is in these businesses to sell a uniform platform to people who build hardware that will support it. Eg, what's the real difference between the recent Toshiba PocketPC, Compaq Ipaq, and HP Jornandas? Pretty much nothing. They're all arm, all running PocketPC os, and there really isn't anything that distinguishes them other than some stylistic differences.

MS must have made it clear to Sendo in their deal that they were going to develop a generic cellphone OS that other companies can just bundle in with their telephones.

Anyhow, if Sendo had decided to sue the moment they decided to drop Smartphone, I would have given their lawsuit more credence. Right now, it looks like they're trying to hit up MS to get some $$ before they can get their phone design converted over to Symbian.

Hell, someone should publish the contract that the two companies agreed too. It just a waste of energy to speculate on what happened.

Re:Sendo should have thought before signing

[Ironica]

MS must have made it clear to Sendo in their deal that they were going to develop a generic cellphone OS that other companies can just bundle in with their telephones.

I'm sure that was the case. However, as I read the story, Sendo had first-to-market rights. The only way that they would lose those rights is if they couldn't put a product out and/or went bankrupt. That is what happened, because MS did not give them the OS in a timely fashion or usable form.

Intellectual property

[Richthofen80]

Well, since most slashdotters don't believe in intellectual property, they should obviously side with microsoft.

Re:Intellectual property

[MikeBabcock]

Slashdotters who are against the privitization of IP would say that everyone should have access to the information.

However, I wouldn't even claim that half of Slashdotters are against the protection of Intellectual Property, but rather what constitutes valid IP worth protecting. Is it valid to have non-competition clauses in your hiring contract only to be let go 3 months later? Is it valid (or fair) to call something that any shmoe in the computer industry can do on a pocket calculator IP? Is it valid if one owns certain IP to not allow others access to it at all (locking out the competition, rather than leasing / selling the technology)? How long should IP be protected for? Should it be treated like trade secrets? ... there are a lot of valid questions that just go unanswered.

Simply put, Microsoft is in business to make money

[Real World Stuff]

I had the luck to have an eccentric grandfather. He loved technolgy, and inventing. In 1983 he bought a bit of MSFT shares for me. Do the math. As a stockholder, I could care less if they were stomping kittens, I make money.

Stac?

[T-Kir]

Remember the old MS-DOS days and M$'s illegal bundling of Stac software (DriveSpace, DoubleSpace, whatever)... and in return for Stac's suit, they either bought them out or changed the software enough not to infringe further on the Stac IP (AFAIK, it was a long time ago, hence the details being rather sketchy).

Re:Stac?

[SN74S181]

Microsoft didn't 'bundle' Stac's software. They reimplemented the algorhythm themselves, without permission. You know: kind of like the 'Software Patent' stuff that we all rant and rave about unless it involves Microsoft in a bad light.

Re:Stac?

[Anonymous Coward]

"algorhythm"?

let's hope it had a good beat.

Has it really come to this?

[Fweeky]

Are IP's really so scarce that companies are resorting to stealing them to stay afloat?!

It's obviously time for us to migrate to IPv6, before this escalates and we have our first full scale war over netblocks.

Oh, sure, it's going to start with this sort of scuffle over a /32, but just you wait until we have our first nuclear exchanges over those last few /8's!

History Repeats Itself

[sconeu]

Sounds almost exactly like what happened to Go! Computers...

We might be fat...

[Viewsonic]

..but we've got all the food!

Re:We might be fat...

[Gordonjcp]

Yes, if you call that shit you eat food.

Re:We might be fat...

[sbillard]

Bangers and mash! Bangers and mash!

I want Louise Woodward to babysit for me. Take Paul McCartney back please. He just ins't fitting in over here. Your idea of good football is a scoreless tie. Why doesn't red mean "go" and green mean "stop", since your driving habits are all backwards. Princess Die was a slut.

Bangers and mash! Bangers and mash!

Re:We might be fat...

[Gordonjcp]

Compromise on Paul McCartney - can we agree to send him to Canada?

I know shit all about football, I don't think anyone plays it in Scotland any more.

Most people are right-handed, so we drive on the left so they can change gear with their left hand (keeping their "good" hand on the steering wheel). We use manual gearboxes over here because slushboxes are for wusses who can't drive.

Princess Di probably wasn't a slut, but she was pretty bloody useless. Now the Russians, they really know how to treat royalty....

You forgot something:

[Anonymous Coward]

The obligatory:

6) ??????
7) PROFIT!!!!!

Sorry, I had to...

Re:You forgot something:

[Anonymous Coward]

The obligatory:

8) ??????
9) PROFIT!!!!!

Sorry, I had to...

Re:You forgot something:

[Anonymous Coward]

The obligatory:

10) ??????
11) PROFIT!!!!!

Sorry, I had to...

Re:You forgot something:

[Anonymous Coward]

The obligatory:

12) ??????
13) PROFIT!!!!!

Sorry, I had to...

Re:You forgot something:

[Anonymous Coward]

The obligatory:

14) ??????
15) PROFIT!!!!!

Sorry, I had to...

Re:You know...

[Anonymous Coward]

yes I was being perdantic.

But, Linux still requires you to know what your installing and why. Linux isn't quite mature enough for joe user, it's getting very close.
I'd wait for:

2.6 kernel
KDE to mature a bit (speed, bloat, stability etc..) say middle/late 2003.
X to become more user friendly, again mid 2003.
DRI to finish of a lot of missing drivers, e.g. S3. Currently in progress.
The next OpenOffice
Stable Alsa
etc....

At the moment everything is sooooo close to being a rollout windows replacement, but it's close not perfect.

at the moment many projects are under heavy feature development, which adds bloat and reduces stability. Hopefully the next revision or two will do some tidying up/refactoring and intergration and make them viable to joe user.

What is amazing..

[WindBourne]

is not that MS did this, but that CEO's and Lawyers actually keep doing this over and over.
MS screws every partner of consequence and simply delays legal action until it has to pay 100Million. In the mean time, MS has made billions off that work.
For competitors, they simply buy the cheap, steal their work, or lock them out and then go through the same legal payout scheme.
When the feds come crashing down, they find ways around it. Raygun's/Bush's ppl found MS absolved of all problems.A number of ex-Raygun lawyers ended up working for MS, and I have no doubt that when lawyers are done at Ashcroft's DOJ, that they will go to work at MS (BTW, if I were MS I would not hire them, but hire the ones that defeated them).
Now, with this much clout, and this much legal savvy (not technical mind you), I would think that CEO's and Lawyers would be scared witless to move into MS's areana or partner with them. It has beena decade since any company has truely gotte big in the MS arena. All companies that have grown fast and big have been always in other arena and do not use MS technology. Yet, they keep doing so.

That's really insulting ...

[burgburgburg]

to John Gotti.

Re:That's really insulting ...

[Grishnakh]

That's true, and I apologize to any mafia members reading this. At least they have some kind of ethics...

Re:Simply put, Microsoft is in business to make mo

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1983 he bought a bit of MSFT shares for me

No he didn't. MSFT did not go public until 1986.

Your troll rewritten:

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Defend Microsoft
2) Get Logrolled by other Microsoft defenders (some but not all financed by Microsoft)
3) Insightful/Funny/Interesting ranking on your troll

Xerox stuff was licensed

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple: Rip-off
Hardly. Xerox was ripped of by both MS and Apple (and others)

Welcome to the new era, where accuracy actually counts. Apple licensed stuff from Xerox, and M$ explicitly copied/ripped off the Mac GUI.

This is probably one of the biggest geek myths, that Xerox was ripped off by Apple. Buy a clue, guys.

Re:Xerox stuff was licensed

[ClosedSource]

"Apple licensed stuff from Xerox"

What! What I heard when I was at Xerox was that they were going to sue Apple but waited too long. I could be wrong, do you have a reference to back up your claim?

Don't forget SGI and OpenGL - Direct3d

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget SGI and OpenGL -> Direct3d

IP Law

[jbf]

Unlikely that a copyright being void requires you to release the source code. More likely just means people can make copies of their existing files with impunity, within the jurisdiction of that court. Of course, IANAL, IJFLCE (I just frequent law.cornell.edu).

Re:Simply put, Microsoft is in business to make mo

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't feed the trolls :P. I mean cmon, it's Christmas. Let him be a lying fuck if he wants to.

Don't boycot, buy selectively.

[DaveV1.0]

I have a better idea.

Buy only selected MS products. Specifically, those that MS loses money on, as shown in this slashdot article.

Re:Don't boycot, buy selectively.

[oliverthered]

umm.... The problem is that Microsoft loses money beacuse the volume is low, windows has a high volume.
Distribnution costs are next to nothing, and marketing and development are single hits.
If the volume of sales of windows dropped then they would start to lose money.
If the volume of sales of say exchange increased then they would start to make money.

Re:Don't boycot, buy selectively.

[DaveV1.0]

What about the items that have a low margin and high distribution costs, such as XBox, keyboards, and mice?

Re:Don't boycot, buy selectively.

[oliverthered]

Umm.. XBox's yes, but then you have to not play any games, since they take a cut of the games.

Sony may loose money on PSII sales but they make money back on games sales, also M$ may not pay Nvidia for the GFX chips in the XBox

mice are blody expensive and the build quality is poor, they must make some money on them.

But yes, if you want to buy anything buy -ve margine consumer durables and no upgrades.(aka the XBox)

mod parent up

[yppiz]

Very nice summary.

--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu

erm...

[Sj0]

What was the reason Microsoft gave for avoiding the "pac-man like" GPL again?

It was one of the more idiotic patents too.

[dark-nl]

Patent #5,016,009. It covers the genius-level idea of compressing data that has repeating sequences, by replacing any repetitions with a reference to the first occurrence. Gee! I would never have thought of that!

The patent doesn't even include a smart way to find repeating sequences, it covers just the dumb idea. I have no sympathy for Stac here.

Re:Officials commented... QWZX

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference was that yours wasn't funny. Or perhaps you could explain exactly what was humorous about your comment?

Uhh ..

[howlingmoki]

Didn't Sendo "share" their work with M$?

IPv6

[greygent]

This is why we should move to IPv6 ASAP.

Typical selective perception from a MS toadie

[Anonymous Coward]

1 - Apple: Rip-off

As others have posted, Apple did not 'rip-off' anything from Xerox. MS was the copycat who didn't ask.

2 - No-one talks about the fact that IBM used MS' work when selling OS/2

Maybe because IBM is the one who got screwed by MS over OS/2?

3 - Sendo: Rip-off This is to be seen.

Indeed.

4 - Sun: Java & C#

You are completely delusional if you truly believe C# is more closely derived from/influenced by C++ than Java.

5 - SQL

100% rewrite. Sure bub. They started completely from scratch and used not a whit of code from any other project. You actually believe that marketing shit?

Re:Typical selective perception from a MS toadie

[ClosedSource]

"As others have posted, Apple did not 'rip-off' anything from Xerox. MS was the copycat who didn't ask."

Well, that's the Apple spin on history. Xerox actually sued Apple over their GUI, so it's clear that they didn't believe they gave them permission to use it.

This gives me an odd feeling...

[inode_buddha]

of deja vu. You know, the feeling that you've seen something before? Something like Windows, in this case. Back in the days when Xerox PARC, Apple, and OS/2 were new and exciting.

M$ evil empire is the technology thief

[Anonymous Coward]

M$ has been stealing technology from other companies
as its way to may profit. It makes sure no one can profit from it but it self.

C# is a copy cat of Java and now it wants to make profit of it.

IE is a copy cat of Netscape.

MS Sql server is a copy cat of sybase sql server.

Word is a copy cat of word perfect.

M$ the evil empire should be sued by every one and should be brought dwon to its knee

Slashdot - 11 hours ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Sendo Accuses MS of Stealing Smartphone IP
Slashdot - 11 hours ago
Nate B. writes "According this article in The Inquirer, it seems that Sendo, a UK based development house, has filed suit in Texas as of December 23 to recoup monetary damages for IP it claims Microsoft stole. /. has been googled.

money wins again

[muyuubyou]

That's it. And that's why our legal system doesn't work AGAINST WHO HAS THE MONEY.

With enough money one can litigate-'till-forever. They have to include Java now, but this whole thing has damaged Java seriously in a critical period. Not that java isn't succesful enough, anyway.

The damage to Sendo is already done and you can bet whatever the court does, it wouldn't be enough to dissuade them in the future. They can't lose.

Sendo is way tough!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sendo may be small company - but, man, are they tough cookies ... believe me, I've had dealings with these guys and still bear the scars!Microsoft will need their Shields set to Max Defense!

Innovate vs. wait and buy

[webweave]

I see this Apple comparison all the time but the big difference is Apple took a look at something that was totally new and dying. Xerox had or was about to pull the plug on the GUI and the Alto and the engineers were looking at layoffs.

The typical M$ plan is to wait for someone else to do all the ground work, establish a product and gain some market share then M$ will jump in and try to take over and rewrite history.

This should be brought up whenever M$ tries to use the word innovate.

Wrong about OS/2

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually MS took money and developers that they were supposed to be using to develop the new PC OS (that's where the name came from) and instead used them to develop Windows. IBM thought MS was their own pet OS developer - but they were wrong.

Wrong about Java and C#

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem there is that MS used "embrace and extend" techniques to undermine the "write once, run anywhere" feature of Java. This was to maintain their PC monopoly. C# is an attempt to replace Java since they have been losing the legal battle with Sun over their Java extensions (breech of contract, etc.).

Parent not insightful, please mod down

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't completely wrong, but it has more than a few factual problems...

Reuters is One Laff Riot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Reuters' quote is, "Microsoft's SECRET PLAN"!!!

Microsoft's plans are about as secret as a wet mop in the face wielded by Moe or Curly.

And any businessman who is still caught in these "secret plans" is one dog-stupid, retarded businessman, or he has been on Microsoft's payroll all along!

Last Post!

[alpg]

... an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown Heights Research Center. When a
programmer used his new computer terminal, all was fine when he was sitting
down, but he couldn't log in to the system when he was standing up. That
behavior was 100 percent repeatable: he could always log in when sitting and
never when standing.

Most of us just sit back and marvel at such a story; how could that terminal
know whether the poor guy was sitting or standing? Good debuggers, though,
know that there has to be a reason. Electrical theories are the easiest to
hypothesize: was there a loose with under the carpet, or problems with static
electricity? But electrical problems are rarely consistently reproducible.
An alert IBMer finally noticed that the problem was in the terminal's keyboard:
the tops of two keys were switched. When the programmer was seated he was a
touch typist and the problem went unnoticed, but when he stood he was led
astray by hunting and pecking.
-- "Programming Pearls" column, by Jon Bentley in CACM February 1985

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...