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."

Comments

Re:Sue sue sue, it's the American way!

[barc0001]

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?

Re:Sue sue sue, it's the American way!

[subsolar2]

WordPerfect became the market leader, then they got all fat and lazy, providing the opportunity for Microsoft to come along and eat their lunch with just a few new features that the folks at WordPerfect were too lazy to implement.

Ummmm WordPerfect got locked out of the OEM market because of agreements with PC manufactuers limiting what non-Microsoft sotware could be sold pre-installed.

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.

Re:No,

[civilizedINTENSITY]

First a little history:

1983: Novell introduces NetWare X and NetWare S
1985: Novell introduces Advanced NetWare 2.0
1987 Apr: Microsoft introduces OS/2 Lan Manager, an network operating system to compete with Novell's NetWare. It's a patched up rehash of IBM's old PCNet.
1988: Novell introduces Advanced NetWare 2.15.
1988 Oct: 3Com introduces the 3+Open network, based on Microsoft's Lan Manager (based on IBM's old PCNet). In 1990 a famous "shoot out" was held between 3+ and Novell NetWare. 3Com dropped out of the network software business in Dec 1990.
1992: Novell purchases Unix from AT&T
1993: Novell introduces NetWare 3.12 and NetWare 4.0. 4.0 introduces Novell Directory Services in place of the Bindery.
1994 February: Microsoft released Windows for Workgroups 3.11, adding networking to the product. The network, derived from IBM's primitive PCNet, is so totally piss poor people continue to buy Lantastic instead.
1994 October: IBM released OS/2 version 3.0, an operating system far superior to anything Microsoft had, or would have for years. IBM launched a major campaign to get software developed for it. Many major software houses signed up to port their applications, but nearly all had to drop OS/2 development when they read the NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) for the Windows95 development kit. If you were developing anything for OS/2, you could not participate in the Windows95 program. The NDA itself required total secrecy, so the reason everyone dropped OS/2 development was only rumored for years.
1994: Novell purchases WordPerfect and Quatro Pro.
1998 October: Novell introduces NetWare 5.0. NetWare gets great reviews, and Microsoft feels the heat, especially from comparisons between NetWare 5.0 (shipping, works great) and Windows NT 5.0 (very, very late; very, very buggy, not shipping yet), so renames Windows NT 5.0 to Windows 2000 to stop the 5.0 vs 5.0 comparisons.
2000 Jan: Novell introduces NetWare 5.1. Windows NT 5.0 still not shipping.

And, yet again, it wasn't MS inovation:

"Network Basic Input/Output System was designed for IBM by an organization named Sytek, Inc. It was created to provide an easy-to-use programming interface for connections between computers over a network. Microsoft began developing products for the MS-Net and LAN Manager (the predecessor to Windows NT) using the NetBIOS interface, anticipating the popularity of the standard. Ironically, the standard is only popular today because of Microsoft's implementation of it."