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)."

Comments

yes evidence!

[fozzy(pro)]

"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..

Re:yes evidence!

[mrchaotica]

The other reason this is important is that (according to the article) Microsoft tends to destroy evidence at the conclusion of each anti-trust case. So apparantly unless we collect it at Groklaw, it will be gone by the time we really need it.

The "Good Guys"

[Dancin_Santa]

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."

Re:The "Good Guys"

[mrchaotica]

So, we aren't allowed to define "bad guys" as "guys who try to pervert the law in order to accomplish something in direct opposition to it's spirit?"

Re:The "Good Guys"

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I never thought I'd see the day when this argument was logically followed through to its conclusion *and shown to be false by the person making it*.

This "everyone has to be objective" thing is nonsense. No one is truly objective. Everyone has a personal stake in whatever it is that interests them, just by them being interested.

You said it yourself. Each side believes they are right. That's likely true. And whether or not in the grand scheme of things one is more morally justified than the other, it is a natural thing for people to choose sides and then fight for them. (And it's not entirely people, either - wolves choose a side againts rabbits, and the rabbits against the wolves.)

It's this "everyone must be objective" and "one must always reason" argument that leads to more problems. If you don't believe me, there's a gentleman named Neville Chamberlain who was proof enough otherwise. Saddam was evil; there can be no doubt about that. That he is no longer in power can only be a good thing.

The same goes for Microsoft and Novell. No one company is pure good; however, some are worse than others. Microsoft has been in hot water with not only the DOJ, but the Eurpoean Union. Countless examples of their anti-competitive practices exist - ask Netscape or Be. So to say that Microsoft is the "bad guy" in this situation is not only smart, but also accurate. Painting Novell as the "good guy" is accurate as well - they're one of the few companies that have survived against Microsoft's continued sabotage.

While it may work on planet Vulcan, here on earth, people take sides. Sides are good and bad. Very few instances have those sides so equal as to not be able to tell the good from the bad; this is certainly not one of those instances.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Patents and antitrust

[tepples]

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.

Canopy, not Microsoft, requested destruction

[rufusdufus]

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.

This isn't a question for the unwashed /. masses

[NullProg]

Its a question for those of us who were around at the time.

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.as p
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.

Re:This isn't a question...Yes, I Remember It Well

[darkPHi3er]

"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????

MS also kneecapped and took Corel private

[Anonymous Bullard]

Corel used to love Linux and their WordPerfect Office and sheer consumer-level name recognition was potentially huge threat to Microsoft until Redmond bought their way into Corel three years ago and within months a Microsoft-friendly consultancy, McKinsey & Partners, helped Corel commit a strategic U-turn to support the non-existing .NET 100%.

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.