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Caldera Evidence Might be Thrown Out in MS Trial?
Coleslaw wrote in
to send us a link over at Wired which talks about the
Caldera/MS Trial.
Apparently the latest issue is that a couple versions of
Windows might not be admittable as evidence that MS altered
Win3.1 to make DR-DOS produce errors, and to encourage the
use of MS-DOS. Interesting bit.
Isn't it amazing that you can sue someone, get a subpoena, and then have the right to go through all of their email irregardless of property rights contained within?
Delete old emails folks and don't archive unnecessarily.
Yeah, they did it alright, they ran their business how they saw fit. If you don't like it, don't buy into it. Part of being free is allowing others to be free.
Americans to others: "we are superior in everything"
Americans to their govt: "please daddy, make the bad man stop, make the bad man stop because i am a useless ninny that can't make decisions for myself"
quite frankly i am getting tired of all this "it's cool to hate microsoft" nonsense.. i hate them and i don't buy from them, or use their products. end of godamn story.
next.
I'm wondering, what was GEM (a DRI product, IIRC) if it didn't compete with Windows a year before Windows 1.0 actually shipped?
Didn't DR-DOS include GEM Desktop as a file manager vs. MS-DOS and DOS Shell?
Grow up. The Anon Coward had a point, "ShadowCaster", you don't. I can't believe you flamed someone for being anon, yet post under the name "ShadowCaster". I suspect that isn't the one on your birth certificate.
Actually, you have an unfortunately very good point. Although jury trials tend to work in most situations, even when issues of a technical nature are involved, Microsoft has a long history of pulling the wool over the eyes of the consumer "flock." Some of this crap may end up as another embarassment to the American legal system much as the OJ trial was for example, as I doubt it will be particularly easy to find people who know absolutely nothing about Microsoft.. and jeez, who must those people be? Imagine.. the horror of it all.
You say "The Anon Coward had a point". What point? Look at the quotes from the two postings. I really hope you can see the hole in the "Anon Coward's" argument.
The only thing that appears clear (to me) is that MS put a line of code in a beta saying that the user was running the beta code in an environment for which it hadn't been tested. This was removed before they shipped the final version. This is illegal? (answer: no, of course not)
I've seen nothing that suggests MS ever did anything to prevent Windows 3.x from running on DR-DOS. Sure, some big shots at MS might have suggested doing it, but that doesn't mean it happened. They probably got shot down by other, calmer, big shots.
It's like the makers of bleem (a psx emulator) suing sony because a new game doesn't work on their emulator.
So what if MS wants Windows to only run on MS-DOS? Just think if DR-DOS caused a bug in Windows. Guess who would get the support calls? Yep, MS. Guess who would get blamed? Yep, MS. Guess who would get the bad press? Yep, MS.
If you want to hate MS fine. Go right ahead. Please though try not to look like a sad little 14 year old rebelling against the "evil empire" while doing it.
First, no one claimed that MS had any obligation to make Windows compatible with DR-DOS. However, Digital Research went to a great deal of effort to make DR-DOS compatible with MS-DOS. MS broke the law when they responded by deliberately making their products incompatible with DR-DOS. Intent is very important to this case. No they didn't. What if the next version of DR-DOS caused Windows to stop running correcntly? MS wrote Windows with MS-DOS in mind, by adding a check to prevent it from running under DR-DOS they were simply trying to avoid the chance they would 10 zillion support calls from DR-DOS users wondering why Windows doesn't work. It is just like what some game makers do now with NT. They check to see if the game is running under Win9x. If not they simply say "This game does not support Windows NT" although they work correctly using tools like setwin95 (nt4 reskit).
GEM was pretty good for its time. If you've seen an Atari ST's GUI, then you've seen GEM. Digital Research also made GEM for the PC and was promptly steped on by Apple. Apple forced DR to majorly cripple the PC version of GEM -- no multiple overlaping windows allowed, and some other things which I've forgotten. Too bad too, since DR's (non-PC) GEM and DR DOS were both superior to the Microsoft offerings of the same time period.
If, as we all supposedly know, Microsoft did it, then the evidence will be present in copies of Win 3.1 that shipped
The copies in question did ship -- they were in significant circulation.
here in the U.S.
Nice touch. Let's appeal to the xenophobes in the audience.
Caldera shouldn't need to look at beta versions ...
Sorry. This is at the core of the case. There's no magic waiver that excludes 'beta' code and related discussions as some form of 'priveleged' communication.
So what's the big deal?
Several billion dollars, apparently. (While, I personally find this number repugnant, I find it even more repugnant to read the concrete details of what passes for 'innovation' at MS).
Alchin can suggest things all he wants, it doesn't matter to the court case. All that matters is what actually happened.
Sorry. Suggestions and intent are fundamental issues for the court to consider. (What log have you been sleeping under?)
Besides, why should MS be required to make their product run on multiple operating systems?
Congratulations. A classic 'strawman' argument.
No one has ever suggested this. On the contrary, the evidence is that Microsoft did the opposite: they made a working product not run on multiple operating systems. Big difference!
Can Apple sue everyone who makes a Windows program that doesn't run on MacOS? Get real!
Holy non sequitur!
This whole case is whack!
You, wigger, you!
THANK YOU COMRADE:
YOU HAVE FAITHFULLY ADVANCED THE PARTY DOCTRINE.
AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.
"So what if MS wants Windows to only run on MS-DOS?"
Because Microsoft is a monopoly. That is why Caldera are suing under antitrust laws. If Sun or Apple or Netscape or whoever else did the same thing, it would not be illegal, unless it could be established that they are a monopoly also.
It's hard to say what had the most impact on DR-DOS... Microsoft or it's poor quality.
Uhh ... given that MS allegedly and deliberately engineered incompatibility ...
Because Microsoft is a monopoly. That is why Caldera are suing under antitrust laws. If Sun or Apple or Netscape or whoever else did the same thing, it would not be illegal, unless it could be established that they are a monopoly also.
Depending on the definition of 'same thing', it might well be illegal (but that's another debate).
I just wanted to say that I find it so sad that this form of 'competition' has so little to do with 'building a better product' or 'benefiting the end-user'. It's ironic that writing code can be such a fulfilling experience, when the industry that surrounds it is so hollow. So empty of honesty.
4DOS not DR-DOS, dross was lame 4DOS ruled.
The only thing that appears clear (to me) is that MS put a line of code in a beta saying that the user was running the beta code in an environment for which it hadn't been tested.
A line of code?
You should probably research the lengths that MS went to, in order to implement this error message. Very interesting reading.
It becomes pretty clear, very quickly, that "support costs" were not a factor in this decision.
They probably got shot down by other, calmer, big shots.
You don't know much about this business do you? (or alternatively, you do, but that understanding would get in your way in making this comment).
MS cannot face the facts, DR-DOS was and is the better DOS. 10x better than 6.22 ever could be. The fact that it has the ability to remember commands using the up arrow (multiples, not just that F3 crap) goes to show MS cannot stand it when they get slapped in the fact by competition.
Plausible deniability is so, so, like you know, 60s.
The operating philosophy of the new millenium is No Controlling Legal Authority. This works much better when you're caught with the goods, or back up tapes.
I found DR-DOS 6 (or so) both a delight to use, and was very happy with everything, except the editor (ugh!). Sure, some of the memory config commands were different, etc... But remember, it's not the "same" OS... Although it tries to be. And its setup just couldn't be beat! Semi-Graphical, and so easy to use! It reminds me of my PC-DOS 6 disks... :-)
And don't forget the timing of DR-DOS memory management, hard drive compression, etc... It was all designed into it well before MS-DOS did the same thing!
One can just take a look at a dictionary to see:
Irregardless means "without regard to drawbacks".
Both flammable and inflammable mean "possible to burn".
No mention of flammable as "confict to one's life."
Don't forget that DR DOS multitasks out of the box, unlike MS DOS.
Sorry - No big fan of the MS jugernaut, but I can't agree here. I *developed* in the PC GEM environment. Functionality was limited, API was arcane and support from DRI was non-existent. It was typical to have to wait for the latest release of Ventura (or whatever DRI product they'd been working on) to get the latest GEM OS version. Microsoft Windows 3.0 was like a dream in comparison since they brought 10x the support to the developer and a better widget too.
After too much time of being ignored by DRI, GEM developer guys I know swithed in droves.
As for the DR-DOS side, things are probably different here. But you *really* don't want to go arguing GEM vs. Windows from a developer perspective.
Concerning B) The code was discovered.....
It was in Dr. Dobb's Journal. An engineer disassembled the part of the code that installed Win 3.1 and found that the installer would show a msg claiming DR-DOS was incompatable and then quit. The engineer no-op'd that portion of the installer code and re-ran it. Win 3.1 installed ok and ran without problems. The wording of the msg, as I recall, suggested that DR-DOS wasn't stable enough or compatible enough to run Win 3.1.
An obvious lie, but true to form for Microsoft.
Are you implying that somebody who works for Microsoft is not entitled to an opinion?
Maybe anybody who has contributed to the Linux kernel should also be excluded. They're certainly bound to show a bias.
To respond to the on-topic part of the above message: Why shouldn't Microsoft be entitled to warn their customers that they're running Windows 3.1 on an OS that might not be stable to run that version of Windows on? Granted it worked to their benefit to issue such warnings, but it would have been just as legitimate a warning to issue if MS-DOS was a totally separate product, from a different company that the Windows company had developed their product for. The Windows company (who happened to be Microsoft) didn't do their testing on anything but Microsoft DOS (and probably PC-DOS). Why should they leave customers out in the dark about potential problems with running Windows on tom-dick-and-harry's kludge-dos?
Besides, why should MS be required to make their product run on multiple operating systems?
Because that's what software does...
Remind me to call an attorney next time I can't get the GIMP, or that copy of Applix for Linux I paid good money for, to run on Windows 98.
BTW my handle at the moment happens to be "Shadowcaster" too. So please change yours to Hobbitboy or one of your other fuzzy little handles.
All this, and I still have no understanding of how putting some lines of code in a program that will keep it from working with another program is against the law? If I write a program, it's 100% my right to let it work with others... If I don't want it to work with them... too bad -- those people can then just not buy my program if they don't like it, and buy someone elses... it's pathetic that people buy Windows, then bitch because Windows is the only one they can use.. grr.
;-) .. 'tis faster than my NT box.. muahah
Still, Linux is better
-- Bryan
IBM didn't do it, but Tandy specifically put code in their version of MS-DOS so it would refuse to boot up on hardware with non-Tandy bioses. I know because ages back I had a copy of Tandy's MS-DOS 3.2 that wouldn't boot up on my cheapclone hardware.
I didn't stomp off to a lawyer to play crybaby though.
Actually, maybe a case can be made that the Jury should be made up out of people who proportionally represent the OSes in use. Linux represents what, about 1% of the desktop market?
That fat lady's big toe will represent Linux, then. Rumor has it she was talking it up at her bridge club last weekend. Something about what a nice boy Linus Torvalds seemed when she saw him on tv.
Digital Research did write their own shell. It was a GUI called GEM that Apple tried (successfully) to kill. I have a copy of it on 5-1/4" disks at home (bundled with a copy of DR-DOS. It's a real piece of garbage. Even fewer useful apps run on GEM than the X Window System.
Why is an 'obvious lie' that Microsoft didn't consider DR-DOS 'stable or compatible enough' to run Windows 3.1?
You can remove all the guards off a bench grinder and still sharpen an axe on the bare unprotected stone. Does that mean that the warnings that come with the grinder telling you not to do so are an "obvious lie"?
Microsoft wasn't responsible for testing Windows' interoperabilty with clone versions of DOS. It was a competitor's product, from a competitor that produced a competeing GUI (GEM). The world is not a big friendly commune where every competitor has to spend millions of dollars making the competiton's products work. Microsoft chose to warn the user of possible incompatibilites, rather than do the testing. Big deal.
Slashdot really needs to work on a new slogan.
"News for Microsoft Haters. Nothing that matters." would be a good one lately.
i recall that i needed to upgrade DRDOS 6.00, in particular DR EMM386 had to go from... 2.02 (?) to 2.1, to function with Windows 3.1. I've tried several times. This contradiction with what most people say about DRDOS/MSWin compatibility still puzzles me.
If the problem had originated in DR-DOS they could have forwarded those support calls to Digital Research (or did Novell own it at this point? I forget). They were not obliged to answer problems that originated with DR-DOS.
Spoken like someone who doesn't have a clue about product support. It's not that simple.
If you think the average person calling support is happy to hear, "Not our fault", then you're living in a dream world. There are few things that piss off people calling for product support more than feeling they are just being passed on to someone else for no good reason.
"What do you mean I need to call DR-DOS!?! This is *MICROSOFT* windows isn't it?"
or better yet:
"No way, I just called DR-DOS and they told me to call you. They said this was *YOUR* problem."
Calls like that happen all the time! I spent 1 year of my life dealing with them.
So I guess all small CAD companies could sue Sun for basically being the CAD monopoly??
Apparently the AARD code is present but disabled in the final release version of 3.1, but was active in prerelease builds from late 1991 to January 1992.
Here is the article from Dr. Dobbs Journal, by Andrew Schulman, who discovered the anomaly (apparently on a tip from a reporter).
Caldera (I think) had a program on their web site (with assembly code) which would re-enable the AARD code in a release version of Windows 3.1, for demonstration purposes.
If, as we all supposedly know, Microsoft did it, then the evidence will be present in copies of Win 3 1 that shipped here in the U.S. Caldera shouldn't need to look at beta versions (which lots of companies, not just Microsoft, often restrict to particular environments) to prove their point. So what's the big deal? If Caldera has a point, they make it with a U.S. version that actually shipped to someone in the jurisdiction they are suing in. If they don't have a point and are just gold-digging, well, I for one won't be surprised.
Alchin can suggest things all he wants, it doesn't matter to the court case. All that matters is what actually happened.
Besides, why should MS be required to make their product run on multiple operating systems? Can Apple sue everyone who makes a Windows program that doesn't run on MacOS? Get real! This whole case is whack!
I got a copy of DR-DOS for X-Mas in 1993 or 1993 (I can't remember the year). It was great. I was able to compress my huge 40 meg HD and have virtally 80 meg worth of storage. I had a cool disk shell that roxed over anyhting MS had. Then I tried to upgrade to Windows 3.1. I had to re-format the hard drive because DR-DOS wasn't compatable. I lost the compressed drive. I was pissed. As a matter of fact I'm still pissed. Maybe that's why I like Linux/NetBSD/FreeBSD/OpenBSD now. DR-DOS was a killer dos. GEM was a KIller Windows environment. Digital Research was a great company that made great products. Microsoft is a big company that make products.
Posted by stodge:
But isnt that the whole point? Win 3.1 worked on DRDOS but MS made sure that if they knew DRDOS was running, then Win 3.1 would stop dead in its tracks. They are allowed to display a warning message (and rightly too), but not allowing Win 3.1 to run at all is just plain wrong. I bet they know Win 3.1 would run on DRDOS as well.
MS did not have the right to exclude DR-DOS because Microsoft was a monopoly. This placed special restrictions on them that would not otherwise apply.
Also, by demanding that MS-DOS be used with MS-Windows, Microsoft was implicitly bundling. They couldn't actually sell them together and they had to pretend that they weren't completely dependant on each other, for legal reasons. But the effect and intent of their actions was to tie the two products together.
This is completely different. Game makers don't own NT or Windows 95. They aren't monopolies. Those two issues -- crossownership and monopoly-position -- are at the core of the case.Even the intent to make something incompatible would not be illegal if MS were not in a monopoly situation at that point. Regardless of how MS got to be a monopoly, when that happened it couldn't legally practice predatory practices using its monopoly as leverage.
The evidence seems pretty clear that they did act in a predatory manner.
It should be quite obvious that this was not a viable option. If they had written their own shell, MS applications wouldn't have been compatible with it, MS-DOS very probably wouldn't have been compatible, and third-party apps mostly wouldn't be compatible because those third-parties would be compelled by Microsoft's monopoly position to develop primarily for MS-Windows.Summary:
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
just like GNU/Linux :)
.) :) and never looked back until I found lyx, and bought a linux (now FreeBSD) box.
I once owned a dos machine, to do my scholarly writing article for law school in 1988. 4dos made life less painful, but it seems to me that it did lead to more crashes. I opened my practice, and the first time I noted that I had bars on my window was when I was about ready to throw the dos machine through the window. I became a mac developer, bought a mac (then another, then . .
The months are already broken - it's been tried before.
...)
After all "Sept" ember Seventh month
"Oct" Eighth
"Nov" Ninth
"Dev" Tenth
A couple of guys from an older Empire had very large egos (Julius -> July and Augusus
I only replied as your post was funny!!
MS caught red-handed breaking a competitors product. Not this whole "Bill sells too much software and he wants to rule the world" rubbish.
I wonder why Caldera really purchased DR DOS. Did they realise that DOS is a pretty good OS for PDA's with millions of developers world wide before or after they decided to sue MS and rifle through their mail?
my blog: good times, man, good times
Yea!
This is like Ford saying that their cars aren't tested with Goodyear tires.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
Only problem with this is that DR-DOS wasn't really a very good product.
:(
We tried to use it at work, and just had quite a few problems with it. Things not working, difficult memory config setup, etc.
It's hard to say what had the most impact on DR-DOS... Microsoft or it's poor quality.
BTW, the article is wrong on one count. Digital Research did pursue GUI, but they did it with GEM. This was part of the Atari ST OS.
That was not my experience with DR-DOS.
Of course this wasn't '91... I was primarily working with the 6.0 version in and around '93/'94. We had a lot of problems with it, not so much Windows 3.1 as just memory handling, etc.
It just had some funky stuff to it, and DOS 6.0 was a lot cleaner to install and use.
How exactly was DR-DOS not compatible? We were using Windows 3.1 under DR-DOS in '93/'94 and it worked.
Our problems were just with the other fuggly stuff that DR included.
Or are you just talking the drive compression software? I guess I was using Superstor at the time, so didn't see this problem.
I ran Dr-DOS all the way up to 6.X. Then when I needed to install Win31 I found that it only ran under MS-DOS. This realy screwed me over because I had the drive compressed with DR-DOS's compresser. I lost a ton of stuff and time because of MS's little games.
I have to return some videotapes...
Wrong. They do exactly that. Not that I blame them, if the API needed to run the app isn't there, it isn't there. If you've ever tried to run a windows program from the DOS command line, you'd see that it says "Requires Windows" or similar and then halts. It sure didn't do that by accident.
Hmm... well, this is what a Win16 or Win32 app, as opposed to a DOS, executable is SUPPOSED to do! It's documented! It's "required" for a Win16/32 app! Big difference! Besides, the way it is done is that Windows compilers stick a "stub" program into the executable for applications intended to be run ONLY in Windows. It calls some DOS interrupt that is redirected by Windows and will continue execution of the Win16/32 part of the app, otherwise it just runs the "Must run from Windows" code chunk. It's explained in "Undocumented Windows 95", at least.
But your argument is about as germane as the troll earlier implying that windows should run Mac apps, or vice-versa. And it doesn't exactly apply to Windows NT, because cmd.exe is a little bit more "powerful" (useful) than command.com, in that you can launch Windows apps from this CLI...
Wrong. They do exactly that. Not that I blame them, if the API needed to run the app isn't there, it isn't there. If you've ever tried to run a windows program from the DOS command line, you'd see that it says "Requires Windows" or similar and then halts. It sure didn't do that by accident.
Hmm... well, this is what a Win16 or Win32 app, as opposed to a DOS, executable is SUPPOSED to do! It's documented! It's "required" for a Win16/32 app! Big difference! Besides, the way it is done is that Windows compilers stick a "stub" program into the executable for applications intended to be run ONLY in Windows. It calls some DOS interrupt that is redirected by Windows and will continue execution of the Win16/32 part of the app, otherwise it just runs the "Must run from Windows" code chunk. It's explained in "Undocumented Windows 95", at least.
But your argument is about as germane as the troll earlier implying that windows should run Mac apps, or vice-versa. And it doesn't exactly apply to Windows NT, because cmd.exe is a little bit more "powerful" (useful) than command.com, in that you can launch Windows apps from this CLI...
What most people think of as DOS in this case really isn't what is at the point, because the point of the legal argument is what Windows did with what DOS really is (the interrupt vectors, in msdos.sys, io.sys, etc.) about, not command.com.
Imagine where the PC would be if IBM tried to sue clone makers a few years earlier, even if IBM knew the clone's PC was legally reverse engineered, etc. Imagine if IBM and Microsoft had gotten together and put in PC-DOS and MS-DOS (again, IBMDOS.SYS/MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS, *not* command.com!) some code that checked for approved BIOS (i.e., only from IBM), and refused to load with "unapproved" BIOS, or at the very least, managed to pop up annoying error messages periodically. It would have blown the "100% compatible with IBM PC" marketing of COMPAQ head clean off.
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Isn't that what Microsoft has really been doing all along until they essentially bought out Apple?
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When did MS essentially 'buy out Apple'?
150 million in non-voting stock in a 4+ billion dollar company isn't usually called a buy-out where I'm from.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
For speaking Heresy against the Holy Trinity (FreeBSD, Linux, and OS/2), we hereby sentence Bill Gates to the purgatory of Perpetual Beta, beyond the land of Broken Standards, in the Pit of The Unmoving Watch Icon.
For burning the Sacred documents of Truth, we bannish ye from our domain forevermore, and declare thy software Proprietary and Inferior!
May you burn in the hells of Eternal Tech Support for your crimes!
--
Caldera bought DR DOS to vindicate the strategy of its financier, Ray Noorda, when he was CEO and Chairman of Novell.
Ray Noorda was in charge when Novell bought Digital Research and Unix System Labs, as part of a plan to leverage NetWare into Novell dominance in the OS market. Noorda claimed that the subsequent Microsoft talk about a merger was a deliberate tactic to delay Novell integrating DR into its corporate structure, and Novell sued Microsoft.
Anyway, Noorda's strategy fell out of favor. He left, Novell sold USL, stopped working on Novell DOS, and dropped its anti-Microsoft lawsuit.
Noorda then funded Caldera. Caldera proceeded to enter the Unix market with Linux, bought DR/Novell DOS from Novell, and immediately sued Microsoft over DR DOS.
Yep -- Noorda-funded Caldera adopted both of the platforms that Noorda-led Novell added. It's ego -- if Caldera succeeds, Noorda is vindicated.
nt
GEM was not a killer desktop environment.
Oh no! It's all coming back.
/me fights off old memories of a 512 KB Atari ST....
actually, watching all the duplicity, subterfuge and billion dollar marketing they have to use so that consumers 'freely choose' their products; s'like watching a record company pick a loud, lousy band (BG & the BASIC's, they only know 3 chords!) and foisting it on us with repetitive media saturation (listen to ANYTHING long enough and you'll learn to like it), people who don't know 'boogie fever' from beethoven buy it, play it on their boom-pc's thinking how cool and 'with it' they are. Then, serious musicians never had a lot of respect for pop music - once the advertising stops people will see it for what it is and it'll be consigned to the 'golden moldies' kitsch culture bargin bin. Meanwhile, keepers of the True Faith® will have some good software cloistered away for such time as when society is ready for it.
:)
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
From what I read, this turns on the timing of evidence in question, specifically that it was brought to light after the full discovery period had elapsed.
I'm sure that this is purely procedural on the part of MS, since I seem to recall their lawyers pulling the exact same thing, asking that late breaking evidence be admitted, in the DOJ trial and they prevailed, though not without a little tongue lashing by Judge Jackson.
This will probably turn on the temperment of the presiding judge in the Caldera case and just how solid the evidence (prospective evidence, I should say) is.
Those that write windows programs don't intentionally insert code to make sure their programs work only on Windows. Inserting such logic may be considered predatory and anti-competative so this evidence may be valid - its a fine line. I don't think Caldera is saying that MS should QA windows for all OS's, but trying wipe out a competator by detecting its products and refusing to work has no beniefit to the consumer (ie no value added) and only serves to increase MS's market share. so I think Caldera has a valid argument.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
No one said MS had to "officially" support DR-DOS (if they did *then* they would have to share in the blame), but what MS did (if Caldera's claims are correct) add no value to Windows and are clearly intended to damage DR-DOS. Making a better product or making one for less is part of the game. However, misleading the public (faulting error messages, etc) and leveraging your market pressence to edge out a competator is another.
Again, AC's dominate the pro-MS comments. Can we get some stats showing how many comments have come from MS owned IP's? Just wondering.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
intent (as the original poster mentioned) is _very_ important. Most game developers add such code to their games because of the differences between ActiveX on Win9x and NT, not because they'll make more money by requireing users to use win9x. In other words, game developers aren't trying to kill NT (although I think a lot of us wish it would die). Its clear (to me at least) that MS was trying to kill DR-DOS.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
My understanding is that the trial is more about Microsoft's marketing practices than any particular technical issues. Specifically MS 'bundled' DOS and Windows and encouraged/forced OEMs to not support any OS other than DOS/Windows, shutting DR and Novell out of the market. (In addition Windows 95/98 disables DR-DOS during the upgrade for no real good technical reason.)
Even if the evidence that Micrsoft had DR-DOS detection code built into a Windows 3 beta is thrown out, it probably won't make that much of a difference in the trial.
Besides the DRDOS detecion code is hardly evidence of the supreme evil of Microsoft, as some folks here on
A) The code was only in certain closed betas. (It's wasn't like today where any schmuck who MS hasn't carpetbombed can buy a beta of Windows XYZ for $75).
B) The code was discovered, disassembled, and documented by a major computer magazine (either Byte or Dr.Dobbs?)
C) Lots of people ran DR-DOS under Windows 3.1. I don't think that there ever was perception that it didn't work.
D) Much worse than the beta detection code was a text file in the *released* version of Windows 3.1 saying that DR-DOS was not supported.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
At some point, Noorda went completely insane. Along with Digital Research and UNIX, Novell bought WordPerfect (only to sell it later at 1/4 the original cost). Novell/WordPerfect screwed the OpenDoc initiative by failing to do their part of the job (get it working on Windows).
Meanwhile Noorda was running around talking about some fantastic billion-node global network. He must have been talking about the Internet, right? Nope. This was a gigantic Novell network running on IPX/SPX! (Novell finally got TCP/IP running last year.)
Other than NDS, the one good idea that Novell had during this period was "SuperNOS" - essentially replacing NetWare with a version of UnixWare that could be integrated in Novell networks. Of course they dropped this plan, and proceeded to see their market share drop from 90% to 30%, mainly due to the fact that NetWare couldn't serve applications very well. Oops. Unix fans should not that this probably set Unix-on-x86 back about 5 years.
It should be noted that Novell self-destructed from being synonymous with networking to being an also-ran without too many specific evil actions on Microsoft's part. If Caldera/Noorda can win this case, it's hardly a vindication.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
The specific code everyone's talking about was in the installer. Was this why your setup didn't work, or was it something else (like disk compression)?
The reason I asked is that I worked at a place that had over 100 systems on Novell DOS and Windows 3.1. It worked.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
The law's the law (darn M$!). If there a really smoking gun's in the email, we'll see them and hopefully that's enough.
Isn't that what Microsoft has really been doing all along until they essentially bought out Apple?
/. when you're only knowledge of computers came from Pirates of the Silicon Valley.
Actually, its a non-voting stake, so they have no control over Apple. At the time, Apple had 4 billion in assets. Do you really think a quick $150 mil means anything when you've got 4 billion?
Apple sold a non-voting piece to get office, get support, and to drive their stock back up. And yes, that cash was also part payment for the ~$500-700 mil of Patent Infringements MS was found guilty of (can't rip off tech and get away with it...oh wait...you can...)
So please, if you learn anything from this comment, its that you shouldn't post on
Actually irregardless is not a word. If it were a word it would mean the same as "regardful" if that is a word (I don't think it is). And inflamable means combustable, flamable does not. Flamable actually means something like a conflict important to one's life, or something along those lines (I really can't remember). Flamable started being used as a synonym for inflamable on trucks that were carying combustable materials, people thought inflamable meant that the material was NOT combustable, so rather than have some un-informed trucker blow up his rig, they just put "flamable" on the back of the truck instead. I guess it's better to be safe than gramatically correct.
-matt
Microsoft keeps making the "Text os is Obsolete" argument. This time it's Dr Dos is obsolete.
It was explainned to me that (of those who acually chouse to use Windows) use it becouse it's a nice dos MULTITASKER not as a GUI but as an enhancment to a text os like Xfree.
In the multitasker market Desview and Dr Dos compeat with Windows but in the GUI market it's Geoworks and DRIs GEM.
The market showed little intrest in Geoworks and GEM. GEM died long before Microsoft could kill it and Geoworks found survival in early PDAs and cell phones. Desview and Windows battled for market share but Windows won.
Sun Microsystems and other Unix venders survived where GUI venders died. Apple almost died. With so many GUIs dying off I find it hard to believe the market went to GUI operating systems.
This isn't FUD as much as it is delusional. Bill Gates would have us believe he alone saw the value of GUIs and rushed to market when in reality Windows was a late arival.
Microsoft didn't push other GUIs off the market they did that themselfs. Windows should have died with them. Clearly the market didn't want a GUI they wanted Dos.. MsDos, PcDos, DrDos it didn't matter.
Jeff
I don't actually exist.
I was using DR-DOS in 1991, and it was much much better than MS-DOS. Outdated it was not, nor as buggy as MS-DOS, either.
--- Bill
You don't think it would be a good thing if the evidence was thrown out of court. Well, isn't that just the epitomy of a useless conribution to this discussion! Just what do you mean by that very empty threat?
Records are kept of court proceedings. The various Microsoft cases will fill up volumes of very expensive legal texts. Lexis-Nexis will have the whole thing on CD-ROM and will sell access to it for ridiculously high prices...
If the two versions of 3.1x were attempted to be submitted as evidence after the discovery phase then Microsoft has every right to request that the court deny their submission.
Overall I'm confused over this lawsuit. Microsoft wrote a graphical shell for THEIR OS. To me they have every right to inform their customers that there might be incompatibilities if you run that shell on a competitor's knock-off OS. Where is it written that just because everyone was using Windows that Microsoft had to spend the R&D money to make sure it worked on a competitor's product? If DR, Novel, Caldera (et. al.) wanted a graphical shell on DR DOS they should have written their own.
Instead of blowing off the questioning of your totally abiquous comment of "That would be bad" --which, btw can be taken as a threat if you read it with the understanding that you're implying you'll make bad things happen--why don't you attempt to clarify your statement so we can understand you thinking?
That is assuming, of course, that you actually have a coherent thought behind that statement.
irregardless is a word.
it comes from the base prefix ir meaning totally
so techincally irregardless means regardless.
yes, its stupid but look at inflamable.
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
Win31 doesn't work under DR-DOS?
So? It doesn't work under MS-DOS either!
(Laugh. I speak in jest.)
It created a bit of a fuss that the application coders were taking advantage of secret OS capabilities...or maybe that MS OS coders were creating secret features to give the MS applications an advantage.
Lots of us are unhappy that Microsoft did what they did--but that isn't the point.
There may be some Microsoft-haters (many!) who just get off on insults, but you aren't getting the point, or you don't know what you're talking about.
Caldera (and DR before them) didn't want Microsoft to spend R&D money accommodating Windows to DR Dos. It was never requested. If it had been, Microsoft would have been fully justified in sending them a copy of the cartoon. You know it: three little guys ROFL, and the caption is, "You wanted WHAT?"
What DR wanted, what they should have had, was the same deal every other software writer got: a copy of the Beta, so DR could spend the R&D money making it compatible.
Instead Microsoft spent the R&D money making it incompatible on purpose. Is that against the law? The courts will decide.
Regards,
Ric
jeez... you can't compare 4dos with dr-dos! :)
4dos is just the shell, dr-dos is the whole
"kernel"
-- close but no sig
...for loopholes.
... consider changing our apps to not run unless the OS is our OS." '
...
Notice they don't say anything about whether the allegations are true: instead they demand that the *exact versions of Windows in question* be ruled inadmissable as evidence in the trial!
The spokesman mentions offhand that admission of those Windows versions would 'violate the rules of evidence' but avoids mentioning the fact that they were simply presented as evidence late, after the standard discovery process.
So basically, they are sidestepping the real issue, which is that the allegations appear to be *true*, as has been reported for some time now by various sources.
To quote:
'For example, Microsoft VP Jim Allchin said in a
1991 memo that "I suggest (at least for systems) that we
(And it appears that Caldera is trying to introduce as evidence two versions of Windows in which this actually occurs.)
'Sohn [the spokesman] said DR-DOS failed because it was outdated, not because of antitrust violations. "The world was moving toward graphical user interfaces," he said. "Microsoft bet the company on them. Novell and DRI didn't." '
This is typical Microsoft crap. The issue is not that Novell and DRI weren't also developing a competitor to Windows; the issue is that Windows used DOS for its guts, and relied on the widespread installation of DOS and its application base to make Windows successful, but then decided that they could appropriate the DR-DOS portion of the market by breaking DR-DOS under Windows, selling MS-DOS with every copy of Windows, and and quietly sweeping under the rug the fact that all Windows really was was a fucking extension and driver set coupled with a no-brainer graphical shell, all of which could have been run on another version of DOS.
And yet they protest vehemently against all the slings and arrows of truth. This is why Microsoft gets so little respect. Jeez...
My 2...
Chief Justice
The article mentions that if the case isn't settled, there will be a jury trial. My question is, what kind of people are going to be on the jury? You can't expect a normal non-technical person (especially a Windows user) to understand things like source code or compatibility issues. I'd be willing to bet that if it goes to trial, Microsoft will find some way of baffling the jury into finding them innocent...
-ElJefe
... they had better not throw out the evidence. I quote the article: For example, Microsoft VP Jim Allchin said in a 1991 memo that "I suggest (at least for systems) that we ... consider changing our apps to not run unless the OS is our OS."
Isn't that what Microsoft has really been doing all along until they essentially bought out Apple?
I use Linux.
Ever seen source code for an actual release verson of Win? Didn't think so.
Exactly my point. It was there in the official release version of Win 3.1, it just isn't as easily provable. I HAD DR-DOS, and Win3.1 wouldn't work on it for me.
The specific code everyone's talking about was in the installer. Was this why your setup didn't work, or was it something else (like disk compression)?
It was.
There is a difference between support:
"spend the R&D money to make sure it worked on a competitor's product"
and spending the money to break the product.
BIG DIFFERENCE.
After 12 months of fixing Y2K stuff (and playing 'Watch-the-M$-website-to-see-what's-suddenly-non-c ompliant-THIS-week :) I've decided to do three things:
a) Cancel the year 2000. We'll just invent new months of 1999 (Undecember, Duodecember, etc) for another 50 years until we're sure everyone who remembers 1900 is pushing up the daisies, then we'll go back to 1900. Simple.
b) Buy an abacus. These neat little doodabs almost never demand more memory or processing power, although you can get new beads that operate in extended memory wire-frame, but you need a proprietary driver for them and they don't work with all mathematics.
c) Move to Venezuela and rescue howler monkeys. (Perhaps I could train them to make abaci... could be a winner... 'Genuine Venezuelan abacususususes made by genuine Venezuelan howler monkeys. Get 'em while they're hot!')
What's that? Oh, yes, nurse, I'll come quietly...
>I only replied as your post was funny!!
Ta, that's how it was meant. I'm going through a funny phase at the moment. Serious service will be resumed as soon as I've finished watching all my Monty Python videos. Excuse me, I feel an urge to burst into song...
/me wanders off singing the Lumberjack Song
Pardon me while I look up and down a couple times and blink at the person who yells at another person for remaining anonymous and then praises anonymity.
:) :)
Finally a good arguement..
You got me on that one. And I haven't a choice but to admit it. Which I happily do, and here's why:
I am making the attempt to be known.
I don't post AC. I never have, nor will I.
Since I have been using this handle for years, you can find other things I have posted here, and know it's me doing it, even if you don't know the actual person doing the typing.
AC's who post like that guy did are only doing so because they can be AC. The concept of anonymity (of their kind) is good, but the effects of it are most certainly not in most cases. We end up with flames from idiots who would normally stay shuttered up in their dark room whining to their parents. I think AC is only truly useful for someone with a good post, who cannot for whatever reason login and/or create an account. The rest are just rubbish which I am guilty of perpetuating in responding to. The topic *DEMANDED* a response in this case however. Read this thread through, I'm sure everyone who truly isn't a bigot will agree that flaming a whole country is not necessary and deserving of an appropriately inappropriate response.
Take that all you nay-sayers! You think Microsoft is the best thing since sliced bread? Look at the crap they pull!
If this is thrown out of court.. I don't think it would be good, put it that way.
We should keep records of all of this too, all the MS litigation, *factual( (ie no conjecture) records of their tactics, etc.. would make for good comparison to what Linux is all about.
>>I can't believe you bitch at me for posting logged in when you post anon
>>I post under a handle, which btw I've been using for YEARS, so pricks like you and the other AC don't know who I am
Pardon me while I look up and down a couple times and blink at the person who yells at another person for remaining anonymous and then praises anonymity.
So far all one person has gained from logging in is providing a catalyst for another useless flame session.