Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
"...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.
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.