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Microsoft Pays $536M to Novell
_mArk writes "This morning Novell announced that it had settled a potential law suit with Microsoft related to its NetWare product line. Microsoft agreed to pay $536 million to Novell, but this is not the end as there is another litigation against them pertaining to WordPerfect."
The WordPerfect suit that Novell will file seeks unspecified damages arising from Microsoft's efforts to eliminate competition in the office productivity applications market during the time that Novell owned the WordPerfect word-processing application and the Quattro Pro spreadsheet application. The suit is based in part on facts proved by the United States Government in its successful antitrust case against Microsoft. In that suit, Microsoft was found to have unlawfully maintained a monopoly in the market for personal computer operating systems by eliminating competition in related markets.
Now, I can't stand MSFT's business tactics as much as the next Slashdotter but WordPerfect missed the fucking boat on a lot of shit when it came to the migration from DOS to Windows...
Novell bought out WordPerfect 3/94. They were supporting legacy versions of WordPerfect for DOS and updating several versions for Windows. How they expected to compete against Word was really beyond me. Any software application that basically required a function key explanation chart at the top of every keyboard was doomed when GUI took hold.
I have fond memories of WP5.1 for DOS but I am so glad that we have moved away from SHIFT+ALT+CTRL F11 for foo. WordPerfect took over from WordStar because of superior interface and design. While many people adore WP I wonder if it is more of a holdover from years gone by rather than actual superiority.
Personally, Word is easy to get and use and it happens to be better than what Corel/Novell was offering at the time and that's why it won out. Maybe this lawsuit was better served 10 years ago in 1994 and not now in 2004.
It is one of those things that are supposed to help you read by preparing the reader for what they are reading.
It is similar to having the upside-down question marks and such in spanish... it is so the reader knows up front that they are reading a question.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
NetWare basically existed just to make up for the Windows networking components being shitty at the time.
Not up on your computer history, are you? You *must* have meant to say:
"NetWare basically existed just to make up for the Windows networking components being NON EXISTANT at the time."
Novell Netware predates ANY Microsoft networking. For most of the late 80's/early 90's until Windows for Workgroups came out, Netware and Banyan Vines were the only way to get a bunch of PCs to form a network. I am presuming you didn't actually work with computers and networks during this time frame, because if you did, there's no way you could have made such an erroneous statement.
And Novell has innovated quite a bit. Or were you just being ironic? Where do you think Microsoft got the "inspiration" for Active Directory, among other things?
Not being able to get WordPerfect pre-installed and being forced to take Office or crappy Works pretty much killed WordPerfect. Wordperfect is still a better product than Word ... Quattro and Paradox have been exceeded by their MS counterparts, but WP is still better in my opinion.
First off, this isn't a criminal case per se. MS is involved with the EU in a civil case - meaning no one is going to go to jail if the case goes one way or the other. Your choice of terms "prosectuion witness", etc do not jive with what the case is. The judicial world is more complex than a 40-minute episode of Law and Order let's on. What the EU is doing would be closer to investigation here. There isn't a big dramatic trial going on, or anything like that. This is a regulatory issue.
Secondly, you say that "[MS should] be tried to perverting the course of justice". You assume that what they've done here is plainly illegal, when it's not. Filing a regulatory complaint against a competitor is a technique that is perhaps hundreds, if not a thousand years old. Commonly used for leverage, and to force settlements on other issues. Filing a complaint or statement should never cause a person - regardless of your opinion of the group being targetted - to assume guilt.
Thirdly, you say "Imagine you were a witness in a blackmail trial and you were called into an appeal" . Again, your analogy displays a lack of understanding of what is going on. The EU hasn't tried MS. This isn't an appeal of a criminal or civil conviction, but rather, a regulatory setting where the word "appeal" means very little.
Finally, your argument displays a clear bias against MS without examining any side of the argument other than your own. It is much more likely in this case that Novell, knowing of MS's legal trouble with the EU, decided to file a complaintant for the sole purpose of using it against MS in financial settlement negotiations. This is a tactic which has been used since literally the dawn of commerce. A similiar version is used in divorce cases aka "He beats our daughter.. but if he ups his alimony payments 50% then I will withdraw my legal complaint".
For a business isn't the ultimate intimidation "if you don't do what we want we won't give you buckets of cash"?
It is much more likely that in this case Novell said to MS: "look, you are going to owe on this issue anyways. If you don't pay up what we want when we want it, we will make your life more difficult with regards to the EU case, and that could cost you WAY more than this piddly $500M."
MS here is the one being blackmailed, almost certainly.