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Should We Follow Novell v. MS in Detail?
e6003 writes "Groklaw has a fascinating article written by a retired attorney. In short, he believes FOSS advocates should be following the recently announced Novell anti-trust case against Microsoft with as much vigour as we do the SCO-IBM case. Whilst the latter is to all intents and purposes settled in favour of the Good Guys, the article points out how Novell v. MS is far harder to call. Evidence produced during this new case, he argues, may be valuable for proving anti-competitive intent on Microsoft's behalf should MS (or a proxy) go on a patent rampage against FOSS. Finally, the article points out that Microsoft either destroys evidence itself (see the Burst.com case) or requires evidence to be destroyed as part of settlements (as in the Caldera DR-DOS case)."
"I believe the Novell-Microsoft case, regardless of outcome, could have a major beneficial impact for FOSS, providing we watch it closely. Groklaw is uniquely positioned to collect and disseminate information about the case. In a nutshell, the Novell complaint promises a bonanza of evidence that Microsoft engages in unfair competition to maintain its monopoly in the PC software operating system market and to extend that monopoly to the application markets."
This is a good idea. As MS could sue over StarOffice/OpenOffice, evidnece may come up that is relevant..
This phrase is so loaded that it's hard to broach anything resembling a middle ground here. If you refer to Microsoft as the "enemy" and everyone else (excluding SCO) the "Good Guys", how can you expect to be partial when delivering judgement.
Take a look at what's going on in Iraq. The American "Good Guys" are wiping out the "Bad Guys". From the other perspective, the Iraqi "Good Guys" are being slaughtered at the hands of the American "Bad Guys". It all depends on your perspective. Until you give up the notion of "good vs. evil" in your considerations, you will never be able to find a common ground and eventually peace.
You have to understand that not only are Microsoft and Novell's hands completely clean, they are not completely dirty either. The Iraqi resistor may be shooting at the American soldier because he believes that the occupation is unjust. The American soldier may be shooting back only because he has been trained to kill instead of think. Each one has their reasons, and to them, their actions are perfectly reasonable.
Until you can find a way to reason with the "enemy" and truly come to an understanding, you will never win. You will only fight.
There's an old saying, "The only way to destroy an enemy is to make him your friend."
...is that editors be limited to one story about it per week. I'm sorry, but I'm just fed up after the tabloid-like fetish the editors had with the whole SCO thing that most of us didn't give a crap about, at least not on anything near that level. "Darryl sneezes!" "Assistant wipes his nose for him!" "IBM has no comment!" "Groklaw eloquently pontificates!" "IBM says 'bless you', is settlement around the corner?"
Wait- make that twice a week, if you count the inevitable duplicate because the editors can't be bothered to read their own site.
Metaediting, anyone? Jolly good!
Please help metamoderate.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anticompetitive misuse of a given patent attracts more researchers to search for prior art that would invalidate that patent. In addition, 35 USC 271(d)(5) implies a narrow exception to the definition of patent infringement where one with "market power" (that is, a monopolist) ties the purchase of a patented product to another specific product.
No. Patents protect the "inventor" from other people competing against them with duplicate products/processes/whatever. They do not protect the holder from competition in the marketplace. Anticompetitive behavior is using force to keep products unfairly out of participation in the marketplace. Keep in mind that patents aren't on actual results--if you have two black boxes which both produce, say, anti-gravity but they do it in different ways, the patents will not infringe. But if the owner of one company squelches the other one to death outside of the marketplace, they are being "anitcompetitive."
Read jack phelps dot net
www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2002/02/25/foc us6.html
The above link is a good article on the subject. Basically, if you know that litigation is coming, you can not destroy evidence. That's for civil cases. Destroying evidence in criminal cases really gets you in trouble.
Spoilation became a big issue with the Enron case. In other words, the rules of the game have become much clearer. What Microsoft thought it could get away with, it can't anymore.
- money = the root of all evil
- therefore evil = money * money
- therefore j^2 = i^2
- therefore j = i
So they are both as bad as one another? Am I missing something here?Karma? Hey I just call it as I see it.
If you read the sources carefully especially this you will see that it was Canopy, the successors of Caldera that wanted to destroy their evidence because it was costing them too much to maintain it, and they didnt need it anymore because their case was finished.
The key line is "The Canopy Group, Inc. ("Canopy"), filed a motion to this court seeking permission to dispose of hundreds of boxes in its possession..", "the primary issues relate to Canopy's desire to avoid further burden and expense.."
The sort of fudging of facts in the headline here is how you get people who are nearly insane with hatred who post here making the linux crowd look totally unstable to the mainstream.
Burst is currently in court suing Microsoft for stealing their video on demand technology. Microsoft had examined the technology over a period of many months, decided not to license it but did offer Burst $1M for an exclusive license. Burst declined and soon MS was touting a new version of their media player featuring the same technology.
During trial discovery Burst lawyers found that Microsoft had purged all emails regarding Burst during the negotiating period. So that puts Burst SOL unless they can prove why the emails were destroyed.
Back in the bad old days of the railroad - one of the barrons bought up much of the 'good' crossing point land up and down a river. This allowed said barron to 'have control' over access. Eventually the courts declared that the other railroads could not be denyed the crossing point under the idea that access to critical resources can not be denied.
It is possible this chestnut could be dusted off and used VS Microsoft.
Groklaw's doing it. Groklaw does careful, thorough, detailed work. Slashdot doesn't do the kind of in-depth research. (Semi-obsessively reading both sites, I think that I can objectively say that.)
If you feel strongly that this needs to be done, go over to Groklaw and help.
But they did not. They started a PR campaign against open source. Why they did this we may never know. Perhaps it was just a publicity ploy. Perhaps it was a way to way to raise funds for an expensive fight against IBM. In any case, that is what most found interesting.
IBM may very well have taken code and used it in an unlicensed manner. Who knows. IBM is very big, and can probably get away with stuff like that. MS probably did tweak the API so as to disable Wordperfect. The defense will be that both were on the decline already and were unlikely to survive in any case. Even if IBM or MS loses, the payments are unlikely to significantly hurt the companies. And both will go on following the SOP of doing whatever it takes to make a dollar.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Its a question for those of us who were around at the time.
s p
The much anticipated Word Perfect for Windows (6.0) was crap when released. The mass migration to Word was immediate afterwards (especially when Word would import your Word Perfect documents for you).
Word Perfect Corporation (not Novell) at the time claimed it was due to Microsoft's Win32 SDK. They also claimed that the Beta version of the SDK they developed for was different than the production release.
According to Joel Spolsky in this story: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1726059,00.a
It was due to WordPerfect being written in assembler vs 'C' and the office team could write code faster. I disagree as the owner of DOS, MacIntosh and AppleGS versions of WordPerfect. Two of which are GUI/Event driven prior to the release of the Windows 3.x version. All three versions didn't suck. I don't think they used 100% assembler and I have no proof to back up this comment.
Enter into the true slashdot conversation on this article.
1) Did Microsoft withhold SDK information from competitors in the first release of Windows 3.0?
2) Why did Ashton Tate (dBase), Lotus (1-2-3), and others also have problems with their first Windows 3.0 versions? (Keep in mind, all had GUI/Event driven products for MacIntosh/Amiga etc. at the time).
3) Was Word Perfect and others written in Assembler?
BTW, Novell should let this thing go. Proof will be hard to find. Evidence will be circumstantial at best. Spend the lawyer fees on improving SuSE. The hell with Microsoft. It's a new era and a new playing field.
Lets discuss,
Enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
Naturally, if the evidence is destroyed, there is no evidence to show that there was evidence, unless someone speaks up.
But, the trouble with this approach is that somebody always saves evidence, either through sloppiness or because something gets written in the margins of a technical manual, etc. Thus, not everything gets shredded, so that this gambit has its risks.
Even as we speak, there may be an MS employee, or former MS employee holding the key to all of this. This is pure speculation of course, but maybe the reason Novell is on this trail is because it knows such a person. Even if that person has signed all the NDA forms in the world, such a person might still be willing to come forward in exchange for some immunity.
"Patents protect the "inventor" from other people competing against them with duplicate products/processes/whatever. They do not protect the holder from competition in the marketplace."
In an ideal world you might be right. In practice, patents can be so broad that they cover any means of doing something, and a company with an aggressive patent strategy can very effectively block anyone else from competing in their arena. Look for example at GemStar -- even though they failed completely with their products, they patented everything even remotely related to on screen TV listings, to the point where TV Guide (!) was forced to merge with them because the Gemstar patents prevented them from competing in the electronic program guide market, because there's no way to work around basic patents such as on displaying TV listings in a grid on the screen, or clicking a button to record a TV program. Not a specific means of implementing the grid, but actually ANY display of tv programs in a grid on screen, is exclusively Gemstar's. But they're not the only company using fundamental patents -- Motorola got the patent on the heat sink on the transistor, and made many, many $millions on it. And don't get me started on how Philo T. Farnsworth was treated by RCA, who used their broad radio patent portfolio to take over his invention, and crush all competition.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Patents are a license to sue. They are designed as licenses to sue. They grant the assignee a temporary monopoly should he/she/it choose to enforce it and they grant a source of revenue should he/she/it choose to license it.
If you have two black boxes and both produce anti-gravity but by different means, one may infringe upon the other. This example would likely fall under a "product by process" claim, and the burden would fall on the inventor of the second product to prove that his antigravity is patentably distinct from the first antigravity, if the first black box is patented with a product by process claim. In distilled form, the rules regarding prior art for product by process claims during prosecution of a patent application state that (in this case) antigravity which is "substantially identical" to antigravity produced by a different process is prior art and the second invention's antigravity is NOT patentably different from the prior art.
Now, if we stay away from patenting the antigravity itself (and therefore away from a product by process claim) you could easily have to patentable devices for producing antigravity.
And, for discussion's sake, I'm pretending that antigravity is patentable. ;)
No offense to the original poster, but the fact that it was modded so highly informative ought to make some people (some with mod points, some without) think about how informed the Slashdot crowd really is about the patent system. Again I reiterate - no offense to the original poster.
"Its a question for those of us who were around at the time."
Ok, i'll bite.
Not only did i wait on deploying MS Word, i was a "decider" for several large entities that were waiting for the consultant community to pick a winner.
WordPerfect for Windows 6 (WPW6) was a train wreck, but as i remember (reasonably well, i believe), it was primarily a question of DESIGN (i.e. usuability), NOT reliability that pushed me and my customers to MS Word.
The outstanding clarity of design focus that was evident in WordPerfect 5/5.5 was (OBVIOUSLY, IMHO), completely lacking in WPW6.
The WPW6 menus, past the obligatory XWin/Win components were illogical, occasionally misleading and often confusing. As were many of the dialogs.
I would hold that most of this confusion came from the complete departure from the long established Wang meta tag block text markup interface that SSI WordPerfect, UMMM, "adopted" for their own, with two pane screen windows, one for text and one for the markup meta tags.
Though this was available in WPW6, it was awkwardly implemented, and in design terms the "context binding" to the Win32 design approach was very poor.
Interestingly, MS Word for Windows 1.0 ALSO had a pretty horrible implementation of the Win32 GUI, however it was somewhat cleaner, and somewhat faster.
Leading to another observation;
WordPerfect for Windows 6 WAS SLOOOOOW, real, real slow. large document saves were "go get a cup of coffee slow".
WinWord 1 was also somewhat porky (i personally stayed with MS WORD DOS for a LONG TIME, much faster, much more stable, from a BSofD perspective - i also had written nearly 300 macros that really couldn't be translated easily/well to WinWord).
so, if WPW6 was all/mostly written in assembler, -- WPW6 was SO SLOW, i'd guess that it was either badly written, or rather badly optimized -- making me wonder if all/parts were written to the Win32S API (what a train wreck THAT was), and also wondering what assembler WP used????
-- in those days the first round of Win32, the first version or two of MASM wasn't all that much more powerful than "Debug", i still occasionally use MASM 5/6 to knock out quick small drivers and some CODEC work, and as i recall from the time (VERY FOGGILY), IFF TASM was around (and many of MS' competitors wouldn't TOUCH MASM), early TASM never really performed for me (or my friends) on LARGE scale projects (it was VERY nicely fixed after the first/second version).
I also seem to recall that it has already been legally established that MS has in/around this time period did indeed have "non-published" API features, particuarly used by the Excel teams in their "life and death" battle with the then spreadsheet market monopoly holder, "Lotus 1-2-3", and Andrew Schulman has written numerous books and articles on this aspect of early Win development.
Lotus, i believe, having bet BIG on OS2/G (BTW, 1-2-3G ROCKED -- way ahead (2 years) of its time), came late to the Win32 party, and had to rush 1-2-3 Win out the door, using lots of source from OS2/G (not quite a port, but close) and the Oz2 -Win32 APIs were VERY different (Oz2 was in many ways much "cleaner" than the earliest W32 APIs).
Ashcan Fate (down the street from my company) was imploding at the time, between the "religious" problems that were besetting the company's highest management, and the Big Bet (Failed) on Framework and that DTP program they were tussling with Ken Ski over, I would say Ashton-Tate died of self-inflicted wounds.
While i certainly don't know the internals of WPW6, most of the senior corporate developer types i spoke to were not ready to put any large amount of developer resources into Win32 until it was market tested, most people at that time thought Oz2 would wipe Win32 out of the market, and many ISVs put their money down accordingly....
And i completely agree, this suit serves NO ONE but, the attorneys, and Novell should leave it alone.
What next? Should AT&T sue MITS and IMSAI for ripping off the OS approach and command verbs of UNIX????
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
I know its not really the 'thing to do' but I RTFA.
What it is about is starting a repository where data about all companies can be stored.
As it shows in the article companies (i.e. M$) destroy all of _their_ copies of data and otherwise, meaning that if in the future there is a problem we will have no proof in a court of law those events occured(Those 'haloween' emails for example) By making a repository where we can keep them we will alway be able to pin M$ to the stake rather than letting them get away on technicalities
This will help FOSS as it will be a very good way to keep companies on their toes and know once something makes it to the public domain it will never be forgotten. And as well TFA also states that this case envolves ENORMOUS amounts of emails and other info that will most certainly be *DESTROYED* after the final judgement
If this data can some way be preserved then if we need it to show as an example of oh well lets say monopolistic behaviour, we can show it as we can all guarentee M$ will sweep that puppy under the rug as soon and as quickly as possible.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Fast forward to late 2002 when Corel "mistakenly" launched a somewhat successful EOM drive to get WPO preloaded and in December that year MS co-founder Paul Allen's venture capital firm Vector, operated by former MS (and McKinsey) executives, snapped up the MS-owned 20% of Corel shares at absolute giveaway prices and immediately began bullying Corel's management to sell the whole shop...
Corel's CEO Derek Burney was a spineless lackey and their chairman Jim Baillie was a lawyer who's law firm in fact represented the Microsoft's friends Vector in the takeover bid (!!) and by blatantly manipulating the shareholder informing and voting procedure they narrowly won the "vote" and pulled Corel out of the public view and scrutiny during the 2003 summer holidays.
Groklaw folks with their investigative abilities could well have a field day reopening the Microsoft-orchestrated Corel undertaking manoeuvre, especially as Novell is suing Microsoft over their anticompetitive manipulation of the cash-cow segment Office suites market. As most people here know, it was Corel who bought WordPerfect Office from Novell in 1996, inheriting the MS-enemy #1 status along with it.
FWIW, the above-mentioned Jim Baillie was instrumental in Corel's decision not to sue MS after the US government won the closely-related Netscape antitrust trial, as the owners of the then #1 competitor to MS-Office, over unfair antitrust manipulation.
Godspeed Novell. I only hope Corel's kneecapping will help you prove you case and take MS to the cleaners.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?