Bill Gates Takes the Stand In WordPerfect Trial

Hugh Pickens writes "Remember WorldPerfect? Bill Gates took the witness stand to defend his company against a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit that claims Microsoft duped Novell into thinking he would include WordPerfect in the new Windows system, then backed out because he feared it was too good. Gates testified Monday that Microsoft was racing to put out Windows 95 when he dropped technical features that would no longer support the rival's word processor. He said that in making the decision about the code, he was concerned not about Novell but about one element of the program that could have caused computers to crash. That code, technically known as 'name space extensions,' had to do with the display of folders and files. Novell attorney Jeff Johnson concedes that Microsoft was under no legal obligation to provide advance access to Windows 95 so Novell could prepare a compatible version but contends that Microsoft enticed Novell to work on a version, only to withdraw support months before Windows 95 hit the market. 'We got stabbed in the back.'"

Comments

Groklaw has a pretty good article.

[rtfa-troll]

http://groklaw.net/ ; tends to give better in depth coverage with fewer misunderstandings than most other observers of this lawsuit.

Re:Groklaw has a pretty good article.

[mikael_j]

You're comparing Windows 95 to Linux distros of the same era?

Windows 95 was infamous for crashing at least daily, I knew plenty of fairly knowledgeable people who took pride in being able to keep it running for a week. While it was, in theory, capable of multitasking the truth was that very few users would gamble with multitasking under Win9x (except for things like running an IRC client, an MP3 player and a web browser at the same time). Why? Because it crashed fast and hard for seemingly no reason (a single program crashing often brought the whole system down in various fun ways, the common pattern being that a program crashed and you scrambled to save everything you were using in other programs, with alternate filenames of course, just in case the crashing program had corrupted something, within a minute or two the system would bluescreen as you did something like click the Start menu button).

By comparison Linux at the time was rock solid. Yes, both Windows and Linux are more stable than the Linux distros of that time but even Red Hat 4.x and Slackware 3.x were more stable than the average desktop machine is these days.

Re:Groklaw has a pretty good article.

[somersault]

The sad part is that sometimes I think you do actually believe what you're saying. If you do, you just have no idea of Microsoft's history.

We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger."
-Former Microsoft VP James Allchin in a 09-9-91 e-mail (as revealed in Caldera v. Microsoft)

"This really isn't that hard. If you're going to kill someone there isn't much reason to get all worked up about it and angry -- you just pull the trigger. Angry discussions before hand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger." -Former Microsoft VP James Allchin in a 09-9-91 e-mail (as revealed in Caldera v. Microsoft)

"It is Microsoft's corporate practice to pressure other firms to halt software development that either shows the potential to weaken the applications barrier to entry or competes directly with Microsoft's most cherished software products."
-Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in the Microsoft antitrust trial

"Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's core products. ... The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest."
-Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in the Microsoft antitrust trial

Re:Groklaw has a pretty good article.

[Arrow_Raider]

Wasn't there a Windows95 bug that would 100% crash the OS after 46 days? And it took years to find this bug because usually the OS would crash much much earlier...

49.7 days. Affected Windows 95 and 98. http://news.cnet.com/Windows-may-crash-after-49.7-days/2100-1040_3-222391.html

Re:Novell is killing babies now?

[TheRaven64]

Nope, he's licensing the IP required to save babies and 'giving' the short-term temporary use of it to countries that agree to sign one-sided IP protection treaties with the USA.