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Novell vs. Microsoft, Again
belmolis writes "As they promised, Novell has filed suit against Microsoft over WordPerfect. Here's the complaint, and here is Microsoft's press release in response. From what I know of the history, it seems very likely that Novell will be able to prove that Microsoft engaged in illegal anticompetitive behavior. Indeed, the complaint cites some of the same acts that figured in the US government case against MS. What isn't so clear to me is how much of the loss of market share they will be able to show was Microsoft's fault, since there seems to be a diversity of opinion regarding the relative quality of WordPerfect and MS Word."
Reader tekiegreg points out Reuters' story on the new suit, as carried by Yahoo!.
They just need enough evidence to get a settlement. I doubt MS will let it get to court.
I don't know if Microsoft engaged in anti-competitive behavior but I do know that Novell probably nailed the coffin shut themselves with Word Perfect for Windows. That early implementation was so horrible switching to Word was an act of self-preservation.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Hehe.
Money is the main motivator for Novell, so they are neither the good or the bad guys, they are a potentially usefull ally to others who are into open source software to make money, and to the open source community (whatever that may be)
And as can be seen, they can also be a pain in the ass if they happen to have an issue with you and think they can get some money out of it.
At the time that Novell took over the Wordperfect line, it was a vastly superior product in comparison to Word. WP was very consistent and reacted to various situations with expected behavior...bulleted lists, numbered lists, indentation. It was so much better than Word that is was the defacto word processor of choice for both the legal and medical industries for years to come...mainly because legal and medical documents demanded predictable formatting. Even today I find Word autoformatting in weird or unexpected ways...
-h3dge
Is it really that time again for another antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft? Geez, at the rate they are piling in, Microsoft might as get out while the gettings good. Not that many people here would mind...
It doesn't matter if they can prove it. Microsoft will just write them a check that amounts to less than 1% of their war chest. Microsoft will continue breaking laws because no enforcement technique can control them.
"brxref
It looks like the majority of their complaints come about because Microsoft didn't document the hooks in shdocvw that IE is using, which meant that they couldn't integrate web browsing into wordperfect...
They also claim that Microsoft represented Windows 95 as a 32 bit operating system even though it wasn't. Which is a wierd claim.
I heard at the time (when Windows started making the rounds as a gadget on top of MS-DOS), that Microsoft had pleaded with the big MS-DOS third-party software suppliers to port their office programs to Windows, and they had showed little interest or downright declined. They wanted to wait till that "Windows" thing was a success before they committed themselves to anything. So MS, knowing that in the absence of an office suite, the success of Windows was almost impossible, decided to develop the office suite themselves, and the rest is history. Is that true? Has anybody heard of it or knows more about that particular issue?
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
WordPerfect was a damn good program. WP sold out to Novell, then Novell sold out to Corel. And through either incompetence (or perhaps due to MS), it died while a child of Corel.
it is no longer a "free market" if 1 person is pulling the strings; which is what they (novell) hopes to prove in court... ... you lost on the non-free market, try to get compensated in court; in the process, try to get the market free (as should be)
"It ain't done, until Lotus won't run."
True then, probably true now.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Those of you like me who have been Novell shops since the dawn of time, do remember how Microsoft screwed Novell so many times years ago. Purposely putting code in NT support packs to slow down the Netware client(has been documented), amongst many other things. I am glad Novell will finally see their vengeance with these 2 lawsuits. And of course we have NLD, groupwise for linux is taking off, and Netware for Linux due in February.
This is just a tactic to get revenue. This law suit is very late, they should have done that at that time. Also, they don't own WordPerfect anymore. I'd expect Corel to sue them.
This is just stupid.
..." (Sec. 7, Page 3, from the complaint).
If you read Novell's complaint they mention Microsoft's integration of IE into windows, which was the reason WordPerfect failed.
Browsing has nothing to do with word processing, and I just don't buy that "... the integration of browsing functions into Windows, coupled with Microsoft's refusal to publish certain of these functions was a primary strategy for excluding Novell's application
I believe they're just trying to piggyback on the Anti-trust law suite that was filed against MicroSoft by the US government.
I'd be very surprised if the court would even consider their claims.
Novell, be happy with the 500 something million dollars you got for Netware and move on!
If you can't mod them join them.
Glad to see Novell feisty again. It's clear they are right and are owed damages. On a side note, our company ditched MS this year and went back to Novell. Security was the main concern as well as spiralling costs of supporting MS servers. It's kind of cool to see Novell servers in all the locations again, like it used to be.
What surprises me most in reading the last few entries, especially given the usual hatred toward MS that most slashdotters share, is the sympathetic view with MS that WordPerfect died simply because it was an inferior product.
Now, this may partially be true, but MS has a documented history of forcing business partners to nullify contracts with companies that make products that could compete with Microsoft's. This is a huge problem, and very easily could lead to the death of a product. Using their contracts with IBM as an example, if MS demands that IBM no longer sell PCs with WordPerfect as the word processor, and threaten to yank all Windows licenses if they do not comply, two things happen: 1. IBM drops WordPerfect out of necessity, given that 95% of desktops run Windows and that IBM cannot sell a PC without it, and 2. Wordperfect dies a quick death. If losing a contract with IBM, which would have guaranteed hundreds of thousands of sales, is not enough, then they die as the same MS strong-arm techniques are applied to other PC manufacturers like Sony, Compaq, HP, Gateway, etc.
The net result? Wordperfect heavily declines by being illegally muscled out of its main business. Then, with no fresh capital, it cannot integrate newer and more innovative features that consumers demand, and eventually dies from being unable to compete. In the end, Microsoft blames a poor product, while in reality illegal and anticompetitive business practices killed it long before.
When will the US government impose a worthwhile and equitable penalty that actually means something to a company with nearly 50 BILLION in cash saved up?
I think you have a short time horizon. WordPerfect was once the dominant word processing program. Actually, for a long time it was the dominant WP program (measuring "long time" in software turnover times. And it was sufficiently good that it survived until at least quite recently. (Perhaps lawyers no longer insist on WordPerfect, but if not that's a relatively recent phenomenon.)
Calling it a phoney product is a gross unfairness. A couple of versions of it were pretty bad, and their Mac version was never stable (or rather, I never used a version on the Mac that was stable), but that's a very different comment.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
How on earth can WP complain about lack of hooks into IE, when the WWW (well, the browser portion) didn't even exist in 1991-1992 !!
And if you do a help/about in IE, it says copyright 1995-2004
The calculator I wrote in BASIC didn't sell too well due to actions of Microsoft. I demand you pay me.
Seriously. These lawsuits are getting fucking crazy. It seems that every product which has failed will eventually seek damages from Microsoft. Sure, some of their business tactics are shady, but they work. When aiming for maximum profit, why wouldn't a company seek to enter into new, profitable markets? These business practices, such as withholding information, are good ones. Hell, if I owned a business, I'd engage in similar tactics!
I guess lawsuits are good for making up profit losses too. It's just a more public form of underhanded tactic.
Monopolies are not illegal. using a monopoly to create new monopolies in other areas is. This is what MS was convicted of.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Quite possibly they did have an effective monopoly, yes. The key point is that having an effective monopoly is not illegal. Using your monpoly position to unfairly leverage other products - that is what gets you in trouble.
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Doesn't that make it a monopoly? That's the percent Windows had at the time it was considered a monopoly.
Yes, but as others have already pointed out, having a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. It's what you do with that monopoly that matters. WordPerfect was an ethical company. They treated their employees and customers well, and gave FREE technical support to all of their customers. I'll leave it for you to decide who you would rather have as your corporate master.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Amicus, HotDocs and Deal Proof links disappeared with the legal suite. Though some legal-specific features were retained in WordPerfect 2002, the legal suite enjoyed great popularity and its demise undermined Corel's standing with lawyers, especially solos and small firms, which liked the bundled third party legal software."
Shackled to Microsoft: What It Means To The Legal Profession (2002)
They're called anti-trust laws.
Instead of stating 'no enforcement technique can control them', perhaps you should be asking 'Why has the government failed at enforcing existing anti-trust laws'.
Should politics really have the control they do over the enforcement of laws?
And should business have the control it does over politics?
The fact that a single business can make a big contribution to a political party and then get away from federal procecution is nothing short of a scandal. The fact that it's not is one of the biggest things which irritates me about US politics today.
The american people seem to have reached a kind of point where they've completely quit looking forward and outward on ways to improve their society. Any long-term issue in US politics is treated as if it was insolvable. When the international perspective shows that the problem is actually US-specific, and that it has been solved elsewhere, we shrug and say 'Ah, well that's over there. The US is different.'
The USA is not fundamentally different. It's yet another democratic market-economy in a world with dozens of them. Sure the USA is unique in ways. Sure there are cultural differences, and political differences and so on. But that doesn't mean that there are no solutions.
It means that people are disregarding them, because, ultimately, they don't want things to change.
Ok, end of rant.
Then we merged with another department who were MS Word users. The new head of department demanded that everyone use MS Word. His justification was that they made the operating system and so the office package must be the best. All the WordPerfect users were forced to switch. They were stunned at how awkward many functions were in MS Word, the lack of power, the interference of the automatic features, and the numerous bugs. I have had to replace a couple destroyed keyboards from users that went ape over the frustrations of using MS Word. They switched to MS Word 7 years ago and they still complain.
The university made a deal with Microsoft so that we could install Office on any university system we wanted and staff could use it on home computers for free. WordPerfect can't match it. To make matters worse, Corel have dramatically increased the price on the academic edition of WordPerfect and the money people won't let me buy a single copy.
Pretty much, the whole world uses MS Office these days. For anyone else who has used any other product, you KNOW that something is wrong when something so mediocre has total market dominance.
Dont forget the apple II version..
And i think there was a CPM version too at one point..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Several years ago we were using wp and upgraded to the next version (wp 6?) and it would crash often and have a nasty habit of trashing your original document file on a daily basis.
So we moved to ms word, which didnt crash quite so often and didnt trash your document unless it was a full moon.
If only open office existed then.
At my current employer we use ms office and it doesnt crash, but does very weird things when formatting text, setting up templates is a nightmare and dde/ole gets to be REAL pain in the ass when trying to read excel files.
A couple of weeks ago i got work to dump office and go for open office.
1. Formatting works fine and templates tend to just work
2. I converted a few examples of our dde/ole progs using ms-office to python/xml/dom using open office spreadsheets. all the developers loved it.
3. The killer feature everyone loved was the export to PDF.
4. The UK spell checker isnt great. ok it sucks. but 1,2 & 3 convinced almost everyone and at $0 per seat it convinced everyone.
wp sucked, the best at the time for us was ms
ms sucks, the best for us now is open office
jumps with joy!
Why ? I think, in all honesty, it had to do with an ever increasing number of clients and fellow firms sending stuff (attachments) over in MS word format. Eventually that snowball could not be stopped. Why so many users of MS Word ? Look at the PC + Windows + MS Office bundle deals being sold by companies like Dell and Compaq at the time to so many law firms. Word Perfect simply could not compete with that. The question is, were they ALLOWED to compete with that ?
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
The reason Microsoft is not vilified while Enron is would be that Microsoft is still profitable and making their stockholders money. If Enron had been able to continue playing money games, keeping themselves alive and their stock price rising for another ten years, most of us still wouldn't have heard of them. If Microsoft should someday implode as a direct result of their shady practices, then you will see them vilified. Until then, they're simply being "punished for success".
The enemies of Democracy are
Frankly, I've never ran either one.
First off, there is not any great amount of M$ software at this location, windoze is not allowed on the premises.
Second off, I have a copy of WordPerfect 8 here, sitting on the shelf, never been installed. Paid $75 for it with taxes and all.
Why isn't it installed? Well, lets just say that in Corels infinite paranoia, they made gawd damned sure it would only run on one specific linux, theirs, of a certain release only and untouched by human hands for any updates etc.
But they didn't say that on the box of course because that would have torpedoed what sales they had. When I found it wouldn't install on RedHat by straceing the installer, I took it back to the store,and was basicly told to go pound sand, the box has been opened so we cannot refund.
Of course the fscking box was opened, how the hell else was I supposed to find out if it would install? Some sort of magic xray eyed genie to peek at the tracks on the cd and see if it would work? Mmm, well lets just say that those are in somewhat short supply around here, they are all out watching what J-Lo and Ben are up to next.
As far as I'm concerned, Corel, now Novell, owes me 75 bucks. Or a working copy of WordPerfect 8.
No Cheers this time, Gene
Everytime Word Perfect comes up this gets mentioned and a thread goes on about it's merits and nothing gets done.
One of the linux wordprocessors should really implement this feature.
When I was young, I cut my teeth on paperclip and that processor out of compute's gazette (I'm sure someone will chime in and say it's name) on my c64.
Back then, there was no wysiwyg or preview of the document for that matter (well some had preview later). You created your documents using the codes for bold, page break, bullets, etc.
This gave you total control of your document. Wordperfect for dos continued this tradition but somewhere along the way it got lost in most gui wordprocessors.
Think of it like only being able to make a web page in dreamweaver and not be able to use a text editor.
Yes, Word has a limited reveal codes, and some others did as well. But it always seemed to hide some document controls from you and invariably this is when you needed to fix something and it becomes frustrating finding where this weird page break, or margin change was actually happening.
Bottom line for me, I don't care about word and haven't for a long time, but for the open office, kwrite, abiword developers out there: Please impliment this feature. Surely, one of you must be old enough to remember the old way word processing was done, and recognize that the feature still has value.
Greetings and Salutations.
And the sad thing is that, while WordPerfect has its problems (like every OTHER program in the world) it really sucks a LOT less than MS Word. It is better at complicated page layout, creates smaller files, and, can do a number of tricks that MS WORD still cannot do. Shucks, for that matter, WordPerfect does a better job of reading WORD documents than vice versa. Alas, though, it is not transparent.
As pointed out, this is yet another case of excellence being drowned by the mediocure flood. VHS vs Betamax all over again.
Regards
dave mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/