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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."
perhaps SCO went after the wrong people ?
Business Voyeur
It was already slow for me, with 0 posts, so here it is:
WALTHAM, Mass. -- Nov. 08, 2004 -- Novell today announced an agreement with Microsoft to settle potential antitrust litigation related to Novell's NetWare operating system in exchange for $536 million in cash. Novell also announced that by the end of this week it will file an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the United States District Court in Utah seeking unspecified damages in connection with alleged harm to Novell's WordPerfect application software business in the mid-1990s.
Under terms of the settlement, in exchange for the cash payment, Novell has agreed to a general release of claims that it has as of the date of the agreement, with certain exclusions that include patent claims and claims associated with Novell's WordPerfect business. The agreement also includes a release by Microsoft of claims that would have been compulsory counterclaims to the NetWare claims asserted by Novell. Finally, Novell has agreed to withdraw its intervention in the European Commission's case with Microsoft.
"We are pleased that we have been able to resolve a portion of our pending legal issues with Microsoft," said Joseph A. LaSala, Jr., Novell's senior vice president and general counsel. "This is a significant settlement, particularly since we were able to achieve our objectives without filing expensive litigation. While we have agreed to withdraw from the EU case, we think our involvement there has been useful, as it has assisted the European proceedings and facilitated a favorable settlement with Microsoft. With the EU case now on appeal, we are comfortable with our decision to withdraw from the proceeding. There is simply not much left for us to do.
"We regret that we cannot make a similar announcement regarding our antitrust claims associated with the WordPerfect business. We have had extensive discussions with Microsoft to resolve our differences, but despite our best efforts, we were unable to agree on acceptable terms. We intend to pursue our claims aggressively toward a goal of recovering fair and considerable value for the harm caused to Novell's business," LaSala said.
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.
Legal notice regarding forward looking statements
This press release includes statements that are not historical in nature and that may be characterized as "forward-looking statements," including those related to future financial and operating results, benefits and synergies of the company's brands and strategies, future opportunities and the growth of the market for open source solutions. You should be aware that Novell's actual results could differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements, which are based on current expectations of Novell management and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, Novell's ability to integrate acquired operations and employees, Novell's success in executing its Linux strategies, Novell's ability to deliver on its one Net vision of the Internet, Novell's ability to take a competitive position in the Linux industry, business conditions and the general economy, market opportunities, potential new business strategies, competitive factors, sales and marketing execution, shifts in technologies or market demand and the other factors described in Novell's Current Report on Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 2, 2004. Novell disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this press release.
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
"Finally, Novell has agreed to withdraw its intervention in the European Commission's case with Microsoft."
No new boxes of tissue until Tuesday!
Oh, the nasal anguish!
I bet the sysadmin is having a case of the Mondays.
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I know this means a lot to Novell, but big money moves in this industry (like in so many others) like a river. Microsoft has a viable, long term strategy for survival and success. Novell has a viable, long term strategy for survival -- maybe. Part of the Microsoft strategy is legal payoffs as the cost of doing business. Things change when companies fail to innovate. IBM was too slow to keep up so they went through a bad time. Microsoft innovates not in the realm of technology, but in the realm of selling technology. No one does it better.
Unfortunately, they didn't "lose" anything here. They simply bought their way out of trouble yet again...
That's because you're a dope.
Novell et al are firing the first shots in the patent wars, and are forcing Microsoft into this recent patenting blitz.
Everybody loses in the end. But you're happy because Microsoft has to pay out a little pocket change to a dying company that has turned to IP litigation as it's last chance for revenue.
If SCO sued MSFT instead of IBM they'd be slashdot heroes.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
No, wait, I thought we liked Novelle now.
Damn it, did I miss a meeting again?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
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.
I would like to see Novell overpower Microsoft more often. From the looks of Novell's new linux product lineup, it appears they may be a major competitor against microsoft in the future.
Paying off these lawsuits is just the cost of doing business for MS. But given their perversion of reality, I wouldn't be surprised if I soon see Balmer giving one of his heart attack speeches claiming that they love open source and that by paying these law suits that they are really funding it.
My
WordPerfect... The OTHER Monopoly. Several Law, Insurance, & State departments are still forced to use WordPerfect because they archived in WPDs.
I really don't feel for WordPerfect's side on that suit.
Novell is "reinventing" themselves as a Linux company.
Specifically, who do you think owns SuSE these days? It's Novell.
IMO - I think Novell has a couple of very nice products that they simply need to redeploy - a lot of the technology behind netware is actually pretty cool, but they allowed themselves to become marginalized (IOW - they sat on the laurels they built for themselves in the late80's and early '90s and it's almost put them out of business).
Once they finish this turn around, I expect them to regain some competitiveness, but getting back into "their" market is going to take some doing.
So is *this* the reason that Chris left Novell on Friday?
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Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
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
Someone make a nice chart with who paid who what...
I have a snakeing suspiscion that the IT world, for all thier intelligence and success, are being played by sleeping agents of lawyers who deliberately steer companies to collide, and the resultant lawsuites just move money around, while the lawyers skim the cheddar off the top...
So, to draw sides:
Novell, Sun, IBM, AMD
versus
Microsoft, SCO, Intel and... erm...
Man this hurts my head, who to trust...
I noticed Novell came from nowhere (IMHO) recently exposurewise, they really built themselves up as a player (IMHO) and this linux offering is becoming the dotCom tradition now, make a any company, and you have to have your own distro! (Yeah yeah I know about novell and unix)
Maybe one day Microsoft will have thier own linux distro...
Oh, I forgot, they are buying licenses off SCO, and rewriting gnu code into longhorn (true!)
Well done those guys.
Now who hates kodak?
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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?
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.
Perhaps it's because once you've learned it, the interface style you're "glad that we have moved away from" is actually superior to most modern interfaces, at least in terms of operator efficiency. It's just the learning curve that's a bitch.
"We are pleased that we have been able to resolve a portion of our pending legal issues with Microsoft"
Well, duh! You're going to get a check for over half a billion dollars. I'd be more than "pleased."
Developers: We can use your help.
It's just the learning curve that's a bitch.
For regular users of the software the learning curve is worth the time. For those that just want to type a quick document but still want to be able to perform operations on the document want to do so without having to look at cryptic key combinations or find options buried in hidden menus.
Most computer users these days are "casual users" and don't care to learn more than point and click. The "power users" might be offended by the fact that they are being left out but the simple fact of the matter is that the "casual users" are the ones in the majority and the ones that the companies cater to.
Gee, I don't know. Maybe some of the failures of Word Perfect (and every other competitor) had something to do with Microsoft's ability to lock them all out of every large Enterprise by their bundling practices. Innovate? Microsoft? Your kidding, right? Their only innovations have been with slimy business practices. No one can dispute their absolute genious there.
Here's hoping Novell loses big, and no judge is stupid enough to think that a word processor (one of the first functions PCs were designed to be able to do) is a market you can hijack with patents.
Word had a sensible GUI, WP stuck with cryptic keyboard shortcuts. WP lost on the usability front. They once had a monopoly on word processing, just like Netscape once had a virtual monopoly on browsers. And they both lost it by never adapting their sucktastic products.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
No. But the sign still goes in front.
Is it a strategy on Microsofts part to legitimize software related lawsuits?
They have really deep pockets. They can afford to pay. When the pay they achieve two things:
1) They can stop worrying about the lawsuit and continue with their business.
2) They also legitimize the claim of the other company, in this case Novell, thereby setting a precedent.
When Microsoft sets a precedent it means that the next company that Sun or Novell or SCO sues will almost certainly have to pay. There is a precedent after all. But that company might not be able to pay. And then Microsoft has one competitor less.
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First shots?
You think this war started today? And Novell started it?
Go to the US Patent Office website and do a patent search for "Microsoft" and one for "Novell" (under the field "Assignee Name").
See who has been doing it more, and longer. I'll save you the trouble:
Microsoft: 3,520, since March 21, 1985
Novell: 243, September 24, 1990
Microsoft has Novell beat by an order of magnitude and then some. To give you some perspective, Amazon.com are famous for their patents, and they only have 41.
Microsoft is the poster boy for patenting anything and everything, and trying to use their "licensing" schemes to control and monopolize the market.
Nobody but William Gates is "forcing" Microsoft into this patent war. They are the agressors, not the victims. And they know exactly what they are doing.
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Looking at Novell's product line, they seem to be a dead company... or a totally restructured one from the past...
Better check and be sure first:
www.netcraft.com
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
That's the executive pay more than taken care of, now they can get nice fat "performance"-related bonuses too!
Ah, just kidding, they're doing good stuff.
I think you'll see that NetWare pre-dated LanMan, which, by Novell Engineers, was often referred to as "LandFill." Novell created the market (very innovative). Banyan innovated with their Directory component. Novell improved on the Directory (a huge gamble and innovation). Microsoft just kept trying to catch up. Eventually they had an inferior product that worked just well enough to compete. Then the FUD and marketing took over. The rest is history (notice the absolute lack of techincal innovation).
This brings up a question I have had - how come I can open up Word documents in OpenOffice, but not WordPerfect documents? OpenOffice has conversion tools built-in for many formats, but not WP.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
There are still keyboard shortcuts for everything in Word, if you want to go ahead and learn them to improve efficiency.
That's what they teach you in those MS Word courses at the local community college (at least thats what the good ones should teach you).
I don't know them, because I don't use Word but maybe twice a year.
With WP I had to know them, which sucked, until 5.1 came out and you could use a mouse to access pulldown menus.
That is, before WP 5.1 came out, I would actually do school reports and stuff in GEOWrite on my old C64, leaving the PC collecting dust. I'd rather wait for the screen to refresh than spend forever scanning over the template to look for the "italics" hotkey.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Finally, Novell has agreed to withdraw its intervention in the European Commission's case with Microsoft.
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
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.
You might be a little young to remember, but Word Perfect has been around for quite a while. MS Word always seemed to be the competitor up until Office 95 and more so after Office 97. WP was quite slick in 5.1/5.2 and prior.
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.
Actually, what happened is that when Microsoft came out with Windows they refused to give the WordPerfect programmers access to the Windows GUI APIs. This prevented them from making a version of Word Perfect that would run in a window instead of through MS-DOS. Microsoft released their MS-WORD with Windows support and became the market leader because no one wanted to stick with a DOS only aplication. It wasn't until later when MS-WORD was the leader that they finally let the WP Programers have access to the APIs. That is why they have a case against Microsoft.
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WPDOS5.x had a mouse-enabled menu; no need to use the F-keys. The problem was that later builds of WP5.1 shipped with the menu disabled by default, so a lot of people never knew it existed. It was enabled by default in WPDOS6.
;)
I've generally had concurrent versions of of both Word and WP (in both their DOS and Wincarnations), installed side by side. Word is easier for very simple documents, but if you need anything more complex than an office memo, Word rapidly falls behind WP; conversely WP can handle anything up through real typesetting jobs. But WP isn't really designed for novice users. (Which I'd think would make it MORE attractive to a linux-oriented crowd, not less.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Legal precedents ARE NOT set by out of court settlements. That is the big problem with them. The suits continue without any legal platform until a judge rules in a case somewhere. Just like when RIAA started writting letters to ISP's demanding names of subscribers they wanted to sue, they continued the practice without anyone stopping them until verizon stood up and forced the courts to make a decision on this practice. Only after the 'legal' precedent was set did the action on RIAA's part actually stop. NOw they have to go to court themselves to garner a supeona before enumerating the suit with a defendant's name. The only way to legitimize a claim is to have it heard in court. Otherwise it is illigegitimate and without precednce. That is actually exactly the way MS wants it too. They don't want precedence set and therefore making it easier for them to be sued. NOw the next person who presents a suit carries the entire burden of proof and evidence where legal precedence would provide much of that for you.
Novell's lawsuits regarding DR-DOS?
Do not anger the worm.
Wordperfect lost out to Word due to one plain and simple reason, GUI version. I still remember back in early 90s when people were still sticking to simple text mode WP without WYSIWYG v/s the appeal of word for windows. That plus the fact that word did try to help migration by providing same/simillar keystrokes, templates, conversion etc.
Also, microsoft has to patent their ideas lest someone else patents it and holds it for a ransom (we all remember the lawsuit on plugins) once it becomes commonplace.
WordPerfect is superior to Word in the same ways that Mozilla is superior to Internet Explorer. More relevant and modern features, greater stability, tabbed document views, better writing tools and extensions, export to PDF functionality, legacy compatibility modes (WP12 can be made to look and feel exactly like WP51/DOS). WP also has legal-specific functions that make it the standard among judges and lawyers.
It's also cheaper individually, and bigger businesses can do volume licensing deals with Corel.
WP is hands down a better product than Word. This is coming from a professional writer who has used both programs since their first versions. I'd use WP all day if I could, but WP for Linux kind of sucks, and I have this thing about not using proprietary software if a free alternative is available.
-Jem
Maybe some of the failures of Word Perfect (and every other competitor) had something to do with Microsoft's ability to lock them all out of every large Enterprise by their bundling practices.
That's untrue in this case. MS has never truly "bundled" Offce in the same since it bundles other products. It's always been a very expensive add-on for Windows. My research shows that at no time was Office ever required as a requiste for getting a Windows license.
MS's success at killing Wordperect came from good old competition: MS offering discounts to new users, students, lawyers, creative types, Mac users, and the like. MS aggresively marketing Works and then later Word. MS aggresively discount their product and offering it as an add-on for Windows to business PC OEMs.
Word Perfect died because of a lack of vision, a lack of management, and being passed around to crappy vendor after crappy vendor.
AFAIK, the first viruses were spotted in 85-86 and they were on dos. The first 2-3 years were pretty quiet (well, there was the Robert Morris internet worm).
Then in the beginning of the 90s or so there were Brain, the Jerusalem-family, Michelangelo, and most notably the first kits, Dark Avenger and VCL. All for DOS/Windows. According to my memory, at this time viruses were already 'Microsoft country'.
So was the Mac virus hegemony between these periods, or does one of us have a memory fault?
Microsoft Word has NEVER had the legal features that serious lawyers still need, which is why WordPerfect became so entrenched there.
Sure Bill Gates father was still using WordPerfect quite long into the game.
Blows a hole in your theory about WordPerfect dying because it sucked.
Word has always sucked, especially in a legal environment, but the war was never about a good implementation of features, but about control and forcing all industries to the same stupidity.
I had this conversation just a few days ago with lawyers who had current versions of Word which they knew how to use and have used for a long time, but still went back to WordPerfect to get many important things done. Word never properly understood, for example, a table of authorities, ir if it did, kept it a big secret.
As for poor user interface of keyboard-based WordPerfect, we have IBM to thank for that. A function-key-based user-interface was efficient in the days of "standard" keyboards when function keys were on the left. IBM came along and said that their PCs and Mainframes should have the same user interface, and moved the PC function keys across the top. This is what is called an "Enhanced" keyboard. If you've never used a "Standard" keyboard, you have no right to complain.
Even today Windows has remnants "Standard" keyboard legacy. ALT-F4 closes an application and ALT-F6 closes a child window within an application. Notice the keys are both even numbered -- that was because they were adjacent in the two-by-five arrangement of function keys on the left of a "Standard" keyboard.
Well, I for one bought computers for a company around that time. We still had standardized on WordPerfect/Qpro and Paradox. Buying a computer from Gateway at the time highlighted MS bundling to me. Basically it ran soemthing like this - Gateway had a a machine with certain specs that met our requirements. Salesperson first ( the numebrs are not exact, but the gist is): "That will $1950." "Oh, ok. I see that MS Office is included with that." "yes" "We dont use MS office we use Wordperfect office, can we get that instead?" "Sure, that would be $2200". "Umm but WP office is cheaper than MS Office" "Well MS gives us a special deal". "Oh, ok. How much is the machine without MS Office?" "That would be $1950". "What?, It costs the same with office or wiotout?" "Yes, MS will not allow us to sell a machine cheaper. It is a special arrangement for using Windows." So if that doesn't constitute bundling, I do not know what is. Yes i know this is anecdoatal to everyone else - but it certainly happened to me. It certtainly showed that Microsoft's success at that time had little to do with superior product.
A little additional info to this quite correct (tho somewhat biassed) overview.
OS/2 LAN Manager from MS and OS/2 LAN Server from IBM both derive from the original IBM PC LAN program. Interestingly however, the smb protocol in its ancient variations that we see in those were published by MS, and not by IBM.
Both share a lot of code, and by 1989, both were available.
The codebases started going their own way at around the time of OS/2 1.3 and Lan Server 1.3, I guess that would be somewhere in 1990/91.
For the record, I was involved in that bit of history as engineer and tester for IBM's OS/2 and Lan products.
Your Internet ad was brought to my attention, but I can't figure out what, if anything, Compuglobalhypermeganet does, so rather than risk competing with you, I've decided simply to buy you out.
-- Bill Gates, "Das Bus"
% Homer and Marge quietly discuss this proposal.
Homer: I reluctantly accept your proposal!
Bill Gates: Well everyone always does. Buy 'em out, boys!
[Gates' lackeys trash the room.]
Homer: Hey, what the hell's going on!
Bill Gates: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks! [insane laughter]
-- Bill Gates buys Homer's Internet company, "Das Bus"
The first time I read it as "Evil" flag. I think there should be an evil distro, to compete with *BSD the operating system that keeps coming back from the dead and has a demonic icon.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
When you ask Microsoft why they are so riddled with exploits the answer is often because they are so popular that hackers everywhere are trying to take a crack at them. It's a pretty decent defense.
Does the same logic hold true for all their lawsuits? Are they so popular that they are natural targets for lawsuits? Either yes, they are, and all the companies that sue them are on the same ethical level as virus writers, or no, and they really are a company that deserves to be sued over and over again.
Funny thing though: they keep getting sued and losing. That puts all the companies that sue them on the moral high ground. Why aren't they getting all the business instead of the shaft? Here we have Microsoft with a nice long queue of lawsuits always waiting for trial and they will lose many if not most of them. So why do people keep doing business with them? Why are they allowed to do business? I thought governments were supposed to protect people from this sort of thing.
This is why I like Open Source. It's a fully functional socialist movement (because it's opt-in) and it actually has the power to stop such bad behavior. Microsoft as a company has such incredible profit margins I can only compare them to Middle-Eastern oil interests and diamond cartels. Bully for them that they're the only public company in the lot, but the rate at which they get sued casts a pretty dark shadow on that. You can't very well produce hydrocarbon and carbon out of thin air, but you certainly can with software and that's just what F/OSS is doing.
Direct away from face when opening.