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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.
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.
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 . .
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!
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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.
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.
...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