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Microsoft Settles Be Antitrust Suit for $23.25M
ewhac writes "Without admitting wrongdoing, Microsoft today agreed to pay $23,250,000 to Be, Inc., to settle anti-trust claims against the software giant. The payout is anticipated to be used to complete the orderly dissolution of the company. Shortly after announcing sale of key assets to Palm, Be, Inc., filed suit against Microsoft in February 2002, alleging destruction of its business via illegal exclusionary and anti-competitive business practices."
Yeah, but it's pretty standard boilerplate in a settlement that the settling party admits no wrongdoing.
It's mostly to keep it from being used against them later in court, when other people sue them for the same type of thing.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Last I checked YellowTAB (http://www.yellowtab.com) is working on a new release of BeOS (which really is a nice OS), called zeta, and has collected most of the IP rights to the old BeOS. I wonder if/hope they see some of this.
The essence of the "voluntary" dissolution of Be means that this money will not go to a sudden resurrection of the BeOS, as some have thought (foolishly hoped, perhaps).
:-)
Those people obviously don't know about the deal Be made with Yellowtab right before they sold to Palm.
YellowTab (yellowtab.com) got exclusive rights to the Beos source code, and is updating it and preparing it for a release.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Caldera did file an anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft for $1.6 billion, and settled for $150 million (estimated).
Actually what this is, is an admission by Be that they'd rather save something to pay off the investors and/or creditors rather than be economically litigated into the ground by Microsoft.
Remember folks, Microsoft's war chest is so great that it actually economically litigated the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE into the ground, forcing the Feds and multiple individual States to "settle" for a bag of peanut shells and a waggling finger.
If you can keep a court case going by filing motion after motion, continuance after continuance, and then appeal after appeal, eventually the other party will run out of money or lose interest and go away.
Basically, during a conference call between Be's lawyers and Microsoft's lawyers, the group representing Microsoft told the group representing Be that they were prepared to spend at least 2x the remaining assets of Be to "defend themselves" and wouldn't it be in the best interests of Be to obtain *something* to return to the poor shareholders rather than see it all turn to dust with nothing in return.
You run out of money, you run out of lawyers... that's a simple and sad fact.
I've been party to such conference calls (on both sides). It's a dirty, pathetic business.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Microsoft OEM contracts forbid a visible dual-boot option.
My PowerBook didn't come with Windows. ;)
Man and Goat
There was a *warning* message stating that you were running something other than MS-DOS, and that MS-DOS was the only thing MS would support. The warning message did not prevent Windows from running or installing.
Windows 3.0 ran just fine on DR-DOS. Windows 3.1 didn't, until Novell changed some internal bits/structures in DR-DOS to match MS-DOS (they released a fixed version 6 weeks after 3.1 came out).