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Novell's 2004 Case Against Microsoft Moves Forward

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the on-hold-since-2004 dept.

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."

10 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Sorry to say... by HerculesMO · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Sorry to say... by Drogo007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Back in the Day, Word Perfect WAS better. But because you couldn't import files from MS's solutions, and MS used it's well-documented anti-competitive practices to push their productivity offerings, the net result was harm to Word Perfect's viability.

      Whether or not Word Perfect could have continued to compete based on merit is a moot point because Microsoft's practices DIDN'T GIVE THEM A CHANCE TO DO SO

    2. Re:Sorry to say... by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But why does MS have to adopt to the standard?

      Two reasons. First many very large customers want them to do so. Second, because it provides a level playing field with everyone competing based upon the merits of their offerings.

      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.

      Then what is the harm of implementing ODF natively in MS Office? If MS's offerings are better based upon real merits, then implementing ODF natively improves their offering and should get them more sales. Why would they fight so hard against it?

      The truth is, MS word is a very poor choice for a lot of people. People who want to to home publishing of a newsletter on their Mac, are probably better off using Pages, especially given how much cheaper it is. Schools who have limited budgets are probably better off using OpenOffice because it is free and they can run it on Linux based labs as well as Windows and Macs and both in the school and at home, all with the same versions and all without any format incompatibilities. It just isn't practical for a school to provide students with a "standard" version of Word that will run on all the machines in the school and in the home (even old ones). For people who are itinerant minstrels traveling from town to town and writing in public libraries, it is a lot easier to use Google Documents via a Web browser than it is to have a copy of MS Office and try to get it installed by the administrators of the library.

      The above are just a few examples. Microsoft has intentionally avoided ODF and are, in fact trying to kill it off as a standard because they want all those people and everyone else to either buy and use MS Office, or use a product that is always going to be second rate as it tries to reverse engineer whatever half-assed format MS is using. They don't want their to be fir competition or for it to be easy for users to buy a product better suited to their needs (which may be inferior in many ways for many uses, but not for that user).

      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.

      Firefox has been a better browser for many years and MS has been promising "better" standards compliance forever. That doesn't mean they will actually do it. They haven;'t even made promises to do better for most Web standards, just "better" for a small subset. Both IE and MS Office are examples of the free, capitalism market being undermined and consumers suffering retarded innovation, high prices, and inferior products as a result.

      All I am saying is, that if you can beat the MS Office suite of products, then you can win against Microsoft.

      Okay, say you're an investor. You have a few hundred million in capital to invest. You can invest in piezoelectrics or office suites. The former maker s not monopolized so if you invest in it, the return is likely to be proportional. The latter market is monopolized and you'll be going up against a competitor who can introduce artificial problems with your product by breaking compatibility. Worse yet, they have a related monopoly and can use hidden APIs to get better performance on pretty much all computers, while they can introduce "bugs" with every service pack that will slow down or break your product. Sure you can invest in that, but it will take a lot more capital to get a lot smaller return, and ost companies that have tried have died (some who even had superior offerings at the time). Where do you put your investment capital?

      The courts need to act against MS and provide investors and competitors with some faith that antitrust laws will be effectively enforced and competition will be fair. Right now, investors do not have that opinion because the courts have largely ignored MS's abuses and the settlemen

    3. Re:Sorry to say... by Mongoose+Disciple · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yup.

      WP5.1 for DOS? Probably the best DOS-based word processor ever. Clear market dominance. In those days people mostly laughed at Word.

      WP6 for Windows? Steaming pile of crap. They completely did not get the user interface shift that was happening and the new possibilities that a GUI provided until it was much, much too late.

      It's up to the courts to ultimately decide if Microsoft played fair or not, but what's not in question is that, at best, they were fighting dirty (kind of pathetic now that I think about it) to beat a competitor who was already doing a great job of beating themselves. Kind of like kicking WordPerfect in the groin once after WordPerfect inexplicably chugged a bottle of hull cleaner and repeatedly fell on its sword.

    4. Re:Sorry to say... by Skrynesaver · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Not sure if you're serious or trolling, but when Excel first came out it certainly didn't blow away Quatro Pro, it was a feature poor piece of crap by comparison and as for

      WordPerfect blew it in the business world when they couldn't figure out how to work correctly with standard Windows print drivers
      Isn't that perhaps a result of anti-competitive monopoly abuse by MS? Didn't they get done for similar exclusionary behaviour towards Lotus-123 ? Aren't Europe still trying to get them to release the full spec of the Windows API ?
      --
      "Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
  2. Re:just one leetle thing by iknownuttin · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Part of the reason WordPerfect lost favor was because Microsoft was dumping Office at a price WordPerfect couldn't compete at. It wasn't until after Microsoft established a majority presence that they raised Office's price to the prices we see today.

    I remember those days and I don't remember MS dumping. Yes, they were cheaper at the time IIRC, but dumping? No. Wordperfect back then was the king of the word processors.

    Sorry, I think MS won that battle fair and square.

    --
    I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
  3. Re:just one leetle thing by Alien+Being · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "...they lost. Boohoo, get over it."

    It would appear that the fat lady hasn't yet sung.

    It wasn't a fair contest, so they didn't lose in the way a tennis player loses. They lost in the way a mugging victim loses. What you refer to as a business model is what I call organized crime.

    Fashion has nothing to do with why we remember microsoft's bad deeds. With so many M$ fanboys running around, it's quite unfashionable. We remember them because as professionals and as consumers, *we* are still being punished by what they have done and *they* have yet to pay for it.

  4. Re:just one leetle thing by Rombuu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Dumping? What do you think the marginal cost of a copy of Word is? If its $5, I'd be shocked.

    --

    DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
  5. Re:just one leetle thing by NullProg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If their software was so superior, why did WordPerfect die?

    Like I responded to an earlier poster,
    http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=490544&cid=22778924

    Microsoft effectively killed it with the Windows Monopoly.

    They, just like Microsoft, were more interested in making money then they ever were in providing consumer choice,

    Your argument is wrong on so many levels...

    Word Perfect made its product available on the MacIntosh, Amiga, Apple ][gs, Atari ST, DOS, Windows, Solaris, and VAX systems. What platforms did Microsoft write Office for? What Windows fees did Microsoft charge computer makers for not bundling Microsoft Office/Works versus the ones who did?

    Did Microsoft offer matching Marketing funds (paid by you for your non choice of an Operating System when purchasing a PC) to computer makers who bundled PFS Windows Works with their Windows based computers instead of computer makers who chose to bundle Office/Works? No, they didn't.

    Is Microsoft evil? No. Are they greedy? Yes. Is there any room for competition within the Microsoft Windows sphere of influence? That remains to be seen. Am I running Linux? Yes. Am I biased? Yes. I haven't had to pay for upgrades or reinstall any Windows machines in my house since switching to Ubuntu. Zero downtime.

    Enjoy,

    --
    It's just the normal noises in here.
  6. Re:just one leetle thing by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If their software was so superior, why did WordPerfect die?

    RTFA!!!

    I mean are you trolling or what? The article lists about a dozen anticompetitive actions MS took, including intentionally breaking compatibility with their own formats and breaking APIs Wordperfect used while using secret APIs only MS knew about in Word for better performance than any third party application could attain.

    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.

    Wordperfect is still an active product. The point of the lawsuit was MS using the fact that they were also developers of Windows to artificially create problems with WordPerfect so it was in consumers' best interests to use Word instead.

    I used to use WordPerfect. It was great. Then Microsoft outmaneuvered them, and they lost. Boohoo, get over it.

    And the fact that they way they did this was through criminal actions should be ignored? Sorry but it used to be that when you commit a crime for profit, you don't get to keep the profits.

    Care to try and convince me that they wouldn't have done exactly the same thing to microsoft, given half a chance?

    Yeah and if a cow had a chance it would eat you and your whole family. Whether Novell or Corel would have broken the law if they thought they could get away with it is immaterial. Microsoft did break the law and so the courts are acting against them.

    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.

    They still do. It is called "break the law to profit, then bribe politicians so that the fines and settlements are less than what they made by breaking the law in the first place." It works really well in our crooked system. Paying Novel fines is just part of MS's business plan, so I'm not too broken up about them having to actually return a small portion of what they made through their crimes.