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Novell's 2004 Case Against Microsoft Moves Forward
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Novell's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft for destroying the market for WordPerfect and QuattroPro can now move forward. The Supreme Court denied certiorari to Microsoft's appeal of an appeals court ruling, which is the fancy legal way of saying they ignored Microsoft's appeal and let the previous ruling stand. Novell's complaint is an interesting read, because some of this sounds quite familiar, given how Microsoft is now forcing the standardization of OOXML. Statements like, 'As Microsoft knew, a truly standard file format that was open to all ISVs would have enhanced competition in the market for word processing applications, because such a standard allows the exchange of text files between different word processing applications used by different customers,' and 'Microsoft made other inferior features de facto industry standards,' sound a lot more recent."
Mod parent down. Images of amputations that should not be.
Shock images need to be bigger.
Fuckin' amateurs.
But why does MS have to adopt to the standard?
The problem is, matter of factly, that nothing competes with Office as it stands. Nothing. Not OpenOffice, not Apple's Keynote/Pages, or anything else.
Microsoft has to have its hand forced. Look at Internet Explorer. Firefox came out, was a BETTER browser, and now Microsoft is finally promising standards compliance in IE8. It may, or may not be the case that it will happen, but enough to realize that they have to beat Firefox on its own turf, since it is now the superior browser.
All I am saying is, that if you can beat the MS Office suite of products, then you can win against Microsoft. But that's a product that is really, really good.... and I don't see it as MS taking the fight lying down either.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
If you find yourself striding through courtrooms with the judge on your side, do not be triumphant; for you aren't in Ellysium. Your market's already dead.
Ice Cream has no bones.
I remember using it in high school ('99?) and how the format you saved in, by default, was simply a type of marked up text; in the editor, you could go to a certain mode that would allow you to edit out the markup code itself (a lot like a wysiwyg editor for html, but... well, html isn't really known for any kind of real word processing). This was so powerful, and when I had a class on Word, I hated it didn't have that feature.
If WordPerfect could read/write ODF, I would go out and buy a legitimate copy (no, I don't even have a pirate copy - it's useless unless you don't need to share your document with others).
WordPerfect made sense. I'm glad justice is (possibly) on it's way to be served.
If their software was so superior, why did WordPerfect die?
They, just like Microsoft, were more interested in making money then they ever were in providing consumer choice, or making it easier for us to transfer information. There was nothing stopping them keeping their product active.
I used to use WordPerfect. It was great. Then Microsoft outmaneuvered them, and they lost. Boohoo, get over it. Care to try and convince me that they wouldn't have done exactly the same thing to microsoft, given half a chance?
Don't bother, I wouldn't believe you anyway.
People were shifting between companies all the time back then. Microsoft weren't some alien group, they were people with exactly the same goals and level of experience as the competition. They just had the superior business model for the day. Back then things were nasty, but they were nasty all round, it's just fashionable to only remember microsofts bad deeds.
OK, offtopic but still related to this posting: Groklaw has been unreachable for me for a few days now. Google's last cached page is from saturday march 15. Trying to reach groklaw.net through coral (groklaw.net.nyud.net) cache does not work. Using netcraft to test for reachability results in a timeout. In other words, what happened and how come you seem to be able to reach the site? Are you able to reach the site at all? Are you able to reach ibiblio.org which hosts Groklaw? I am not. My location is Sweden, connected to the net through Telia. Am I up sh*t creek, did the servers burn down, did someone with a backhoe do something nasty, did Microsoft DDoS ibiblio to keep them from reporting on OhnOXML? Inquiring minds want to know...
--frank[at]unternet.org
Looks like I picked a bad week to quit /b/.
Comparing proprietary document files, which can ONLY be read by the proprietary software when it first comes out, to HTML files, which might be rendered *somewhat* poorly on a different software, but most can be read just fine. HTML is pretty open already. I think THAT is the point. Apples and grapefruit.
Informative? Maybe if you are 13 and this is your first day on Slashdot.
And it looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
> Yes, they were cheaper at the time IIRC, but dumping? No. Wordperfect back then was the king of the word processors.
:)
Yes, dumping. They forced OEMs to license Works (stripped-down Office), made parts of Word into components of Windows, and made sure that Word's file formats were known to no one else.
Ironically, this should be a technical case the judges can understand. Many law offices STILL use WordPerfect, because it was better.
> Sorry, I think MS won that battle fair and square.
You're mistaken, and the rulings thus far seem to back me up on that
I think the behemoth is definitely in the right on this one, as always. They are always doing the right thing. Like running this multi-zillion dollar advertising campaign for Apple Macs, which is codenamed Vista or something like that.
It's really ingenious. Want to advertise something cool? Make a competing product that really sucks, and then people will buy the cool product. By leveraging innovative technologies, content providers streamline compelling enterprise solutions.
playing with yourself is the easiest way to be exposed to a judge. If you have a monopoly in a market, you cant use it to give yourself the edge in another market (without allowing other competitors in the second market to do the same). This is simple competition law, IANAL so this competition law isn't quite that simple, but the ignorance of some people here, probably the fan boys, is shocking.
I can believe that novel wouldn't have done the same thing, in exactly the same way British gas didnt and sun didnt force its JVM monopoly on OpenOffice. Pushing the limits of competition law is normal, but blatantly crossing the line is something few companies do!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
More of the story about why the competitors lost market share:
1) Microsoft apparently was deliberately allowing piracy of Microsoft Office and other Microsoft products. I know this because I called the Microsoft legal department, accused them of allowing piracy, and forced them to stop some of the local pirate outlets. In response, Microsoft brought one court case. But the other pirates continued. Later Microsoft made it impossible to contact their legal department.
Legitimate suppliers of alternative products could not compete because computer customers were being offered pirated copies of Microsoft Office for $50 when bought with a computer -- or less.
2) The people who owned most of the WordPerfect stock did not WANT to compete. You can read the book about this written by the COO of WordPerfect, Almost Perfect, available online.
My opinion is that Microsoft allowed piracy, and that was the biggest contributing factor toward the failure of competitors.
"Listen" would be the theme for 1990.
In January Microsoft offered to make us a beta test site for Windows 3.0. We accepted their generous offer, but did little more than look Windows over. In hindsight, it is easy to see we should have done much more right away.
Some of us were ready to postpone OS/2 in favor of Windows, but the programmers in the OS/2 group, who had also been given the assignment of eventually creating the Windows version, were not ready to give up on OS/2. They were making good progress and hated the idea of starting over... They wanted to believe in IBM, as did the rest of us. The failure of OS/2 meant having to play on a field owned and operated by Microsoft, with Microsoft making the rules.
In May Microsoft shipped Windows 3.0, and our worst fears became a reality. Just at the time we were decisively winning in the DOS word processing market, the personal computing world wanted Windows, bugs and all. To make matters worse, Microsoft Word for Windows was already on dealer shelves and had received good reviews. That little cloud on the horizon, which had looked so harmless in 1986, was all around us, looking ominous and threatening. IBM's strength and size were no protection. Not even an elephant could ignore the impending storm.
WordPerfect Office was turning into a big problem. The program was useful, but it had a few weaknesses. The directory services, which listed all the people on the mail system with their electronic addresses, could not hold more than one or two thousand people. The schedular, which could be used to put together a meeting, was slow and sometimes unreliable. Installing the program was a very difficult process.
1991...was our year to "think."
Our biggest [problem] was the continued delay in the shipment of WordPerfect for Windows. Just one week after Fall COMDEX in 1990, the Windows programmers informed us that the dates we had given...would be impossible to meet. ... We were in deep trouble.
We...took too long to make our experienced DOS programmers get involved. They could have helped a little more, but we had a hard time convincing them that the Windows project was more important than anything else. With sales still going up, many thought things were going too well to be concerned.
One big problem was getting all the different Office development groups to work together. By now we had teams for PC networks, for the Macintosh, and for UNIX, DG, and DEC machines. Unfortunately, none of the groups seemed to be willing to work out their differences.
Our long term success was, I thought, dependent on diversity. If the world was filled only with Windows machines, then Microsoft would have a tremendous advantage. If instead the world was filled with DOS, Windows, OS/2, Macintosh, and UNIX machines, we could maintain our advantage in the personal computer word processing market.
Our theme for 1992 was "focus."
We were...disappointed by the lukewarm WPwin reviews. The reviewers complained that the product was a little slow and a little buggy, and they were right. Long gone were the days when I could take a WordPerfect review home and be certain I would enjoy reading it.
We needed to get a cleaner and faster version of WPwin out the door, but it would take some time. Microsoft was heavily promoting DDE (dynamic data exchange)... In theory, if we wrote our program to support Microsoft's specifications, a WPwin document could give and receive information to and from other programs. Instead of releasing another version of WPwin right away, the programmers wanted to delay the release so the new feature could be included..
We were in a battle to the death w
How many Microsoft software engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb ?
Non, Microsoft defines darkness at the new standard.
...the new cozy agreements occurring on the partnering front between these two? By this I mean the whole SCO death, Novell = UNIX, MS-and-Novell-are-buddies-for-big-business thing.
Funny how the big players can be foes on one front and friends on another. Reminds me of Apple v. MS, IBM v. MS, IBM v. Apple, Novell v. MS (oops...again?), Apple v. Apple (now the Beatles catalog is on iTunes), and who knows how many more combos exist once Intel & Motorola are brought up.
Suits are like...well...suits, one can change them every day but they normally hang in the closet (if you're lucky.)
Proudly written on my new Mac,
- e
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
What do you think the marginal cost of a copy of Word is? If its $5, I'd be shocked.
The marginal cost to M$ is next to zero, the cost of the electricity required to make the copy. It would be a rip off for half that price because it costs you your liberty.
It was dumping Just the same. When there's a market of fixed size and your competitor needs to sell their product at D to make it's operating cost and you offer your competing product at anything from D- to zero, you have dumped your product. If you are able to do this because of some monopoly in another product, you have used something called monopoly rent and you have subsidized the destruction of your competitor. Then, when your competitor is out of business, you raise the price of your competing product to $400, the purpose of your dumping has been revealed.
There's more than dumping that happened here. M$ engaged in OS level anti-competitive practices unique to software, FUD unique to M$ and selective marketing/bribery that's all too common. It will be interesting to see exactly what kind of filth this new trial will prove.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I have quite a few clients who bought PCs with Office 2007 installed and the ones that didn't have Office 2003 CDs, are all over the moon with OpenOffice.org.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advocacy
As someone who used Word Perfect, then Word Perfect Suite, for many years, I will tell you straight-up and without any question that it blew the doors off Word and Office. I've still got original editions of WP Suite 7 and Office Professional 9, though I've long-since been forced to put them on the shelf.
The triumph of Microsoft Office was a triumph of mediocrity and bloat over quality.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
That's not what dumping means.
Word Perfect made its product available on the MacIntosh, Amiga, Apple ][gs, Atari ST, DOS, Windows, Solaris, and VAX systems.
They also made WordPerfect for Linux, which (itself being closed source) was a massive commercial failure. Most Linux adopters at the time weren't interested in something that wasn't free. No doubt that whole debacle didn't help WordPerfect any either.
It's kind of an interesting footnote, in the sense that I often see people posting to Slashdot that more companies should release their software for Linux as well as Windows/Mac, and there's a great example of why most commercial software isn't.
sorry if that has been asked before, i cba to read it all. but isn't novell the company that has some sort of deal with ms? like playing together in the same team and stuff? i don't get it, this lawsuit business just drives me crazy.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
I thought Novell were MS-friendly these days? Does this mean I can run OpenSUSE now?
Document migration was not that bad (a lot of work) use gnumeric for spreadsheets (hint hint) and things where done.
WERE done
I have to question Novells longevity since there deal with Microsoft and I am sure Steve will be having words with Ron about this case.
THEIR deal
Ah well, at least you didn't render "lose" as "loose". I'm fucking tired of seeing that one.
While twitter has at times shown zealotry, the GP post shows no signs of it. If you can't refute the post based on its actual content, don't resort to an attack on past character. If that's the best retort you have, perhaps you shouldn't respond.
Ah well, at least you didn't render "lose" as "loose". I'm fucking tired of seeing that one.
You're a dick anyway, so who cares?
Can you hear the sound of the fiddle and the drum
Passing, then fade?
Can you hear the sound of chanting in the streets
Screaming for better days?
You've heard it all, yes we've all heard it all
So tell me what has changed?
You've seen it all, yes we've all seen it all
So tell me what has changed?
And the palace stays the same
Only the guards ever change
So lay me down, oh lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down
Oh lay me down, ah lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down
*violin solo*
And you've heard the singer sing protest songs,
Telling us what is wrong;
And you've read the books that say where to look,
Well, where's the answer gone?
You've seen it all, yes we've all seen it all
So tell me what has changed?
You've read it all, yes we've all read it all
So tell me what has changed?
And the palace stays the same
Only the guards ever change
So lay me down, oh lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down
Oh lay me down, ah lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down
(C) Chadwick/Miles/Cunningham/Heather/Sevinck, 1988. Notice under CDPA 1988 AA: This reproduction is believed to constitute Fair Dealing, because it accurately describes what I was genuinely feeling when I heard this "news" report.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Cutting an artery and waiting?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
This was, in fact, a failing of WordPerfect, because Microsoft made sure you could import them the other way around.
And how do you figure that? Does Microsoft have a record of documenting its formats openly, in a way that's implementable by third parties? Does the acronym "OOXML" mean anything to you? Just possibly the same pernicious crap they pull today was being pulled in the 80s and 90s. Just possibly...
you had me at #!
Sorry, I think MS won that battle fair and square.
I'm not sure MS has ever tried to win anything "fair and square".
They're sure losing a lot of big court cases "fair and square", though. It's better than Mexican soaps. The fake tears are the same though.
you had me at #!
Try to correct a troll mod and you get slapped with an offtopic too.
This is probably a good sign you shouldn't have bothered slashdot with such trivialities.
Serves ya right.
Twitter has also confessed to having multiple sockpuppet accounts on Slashdot. But you already knew that, right, "Erris"?
Except I was naive enough to follow their advice, and it hosed our domain server. So when I called them back they wanted me to crack my wallet before they would fix the problem they caused. I sent through several levels of supervisors and finally got someone to promise to call me back... then I did what I should have done in the first place and checked online (Usenet, this was before Google) and had everything fixed and working by the time they got back to me.
Thanks for that, but would you care to answer my question instead of making some half-arsed attempt at making me look paranoid?
Any moron with half a brain can piece together the way you push your POV on Slashdot and resolve it to the (at least) 5 current identities that you use to shill the site.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
But that's just me.
M$ is a drug dealer, and the DOJ is trying to legalize drugs.
It isn't a debate on whether or not the drugs are prescription, illicit, healthy, harmful, aspirin, crack, penicillin, or poison.
We all know it's poison, sold as penicillin, and marketed like a crack.
It is the marketing, the gang like protection / intimidation, territorial warfare, theft, murder, etc. that the DOJ has a problem with, as well they should.
Anyone that says that a crack dealer should be allowed to murder and steal because it is part of having a successful product line, and the only reason they are able to make money while treating customers like shit, is because they have better crack, has obviously been smoking too much of the topic in general.
B-)
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
I suspect you think I'm one of them. Mind un-foeing me if that's the case? I like what you say for the most part, but I think at one point we were at odds about mono in one comment thread. If you didn't think I was a twitter puppet then keep me foe'd because I meant everything I said, but if you foe'd me because you thought I was twitter, I'd prefer that be undone.
You? Never did... can't remember why I foed you, to be honest.
Undone.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien