Slashdot Mirror
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".
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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...