Novell vs. Microsoft, Again 309
belmolis writes "As they promised, Novell has filed suit against Microsoft over WordPerfect. Here's the complaint, and here is Microsoft's press release in response. From what I know of the history, it seems very likely that Novell will be able to prove that Microsoft engaged in illegal anticompetitive behavior. Indeed, the complaint cites some of the same acts that figured in the US government case against MS. What isn't so clear to me is how much of the loss of market share they will be able to show was Microsoft's fault, since there seems to be a diversity of opinion regarding the relative quality of WordPerfect and MS Word."
Reader tekiegreg points out Reuters' story on the new suit, as carried by Yahoo!.
Prove? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Business strategy of the FUTURE :) (Score:5, Informative)
Calling it a phoney product is a gross unfairness. A couple of versions of it were pretty bad, and their Mac version was never stable (or rather, I never used a version on the Mac that was stable), but that's a very different comment.
Re:Business strategy of the FUTURE :) (Score:3, Informative)
And i think there was a CPM version too at one point..
Re:Business strategy of the FUTURE :) (Score:5, Insightful)
Why ? I think, in all honesty, it had to do with an ever increasing number of clients and fellow firms sending stuff (attachments) over in MS word format. Eventually that snowball could not be stopped. Why so many users of MS Word ? Look at the PC + Windows + MS Office bundle deals being sold by companies like Dell and Compaq at the time to so many law firms. Word Perfect simply could not compete with that. The question is, were they ALLOWED to compete with that ?
Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually that's part of what they are alleging MicroSoft caused I believe. MS told them that OS/2 was the way to go, not to worry about a Windows implementation, and then hid the APIs needed to make a good Windows implementation at the same time.
But I do agree, the early WPWin was pretty bad, where I worked we stuck with the DOS versions, which fortunately ran quite well under Windows anyway.
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:2)
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:2, Insightful)
I used to have wordperfect on my Apple II GS. One of my friends used it to write a huge ass long story. So then it came time to save it. So he dutifully puts in the disk he brought. Uh-Oh, not enough space. No big deal right? So I grab one of the few extras I
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:3, Insightful)
My take is that WordPerfect was the king of DOS assembly programming and was always on top of the heap because of the sheer amount of functionality they could cram into 640K.
They simply had no clue how or desire to engineer a product for a more modern environment. (The terrible WP releases for Windows and OS/2 were a
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:2)
It's this Microsoft's fault? Not really.
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:3, Interesting)
Version 6.1(DOS) was a very good version, in my view. Stable (6.0 had some problems but we got a free upgrade and 6.1 fixed them,) keystroke compatibility with 5.1 on toggle with a more GUI mode that was easier for new users, and also for the first time with a WYSIWYG mode which I found helpful when working with charts and graphs. But several people in the office asked me to roll back 5.1 anyway - they already knew how to do everything with it, and it did run faster in less memory - very important running i
Agreed (Score:2)
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:2)
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:2)
If WordPerfect Corporation (the company that owned WordPerfect at the time they started to lose their market share) really believed that they couldn't produce a non-buggy Windows version of WordPerfect due to insufficient info from MS, they shouldn't have released one.
All of this has little to do with OS/2 since the tipping point occured during Windows 3.0/3.1 timeframe not
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:2)
Oh, yeah, 'cause that would have seemed a really good business proposition... "let's not try to write a good wordprocessor for the systems out there, let's wait, what 14 years, and sue the people who won't let us have their APIs"
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:2)
Microsoft never told anyone not to write for Windows; they made the phony argument that writing for Windows was the path to eventually writng for OS/2.
But the phoniness of this argument is best displayed by pointing out that the only program worse than Word Perfect for Windows was Word Perfect for OS/2. It was a completely horrible program that was so slow that it couldn't even keep up with your typing. Even the worst screwball OS/2 zealots didn't try to [os2ezine.com]
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:3, Interesting)
You never tried Word Perfect for Solaris, did you?
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:3, Interesting)
This seems odd as the "Browsing" features they claim relate to Internet Explorer, which was not included with Windows 95 until OSR2 and did not become a critical part of the system until Windows 98. What information could Novell have needed about Internet Expl
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:2)
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe not for criminal prosecution. But if the victim only had six months to live, in a civil suit it would probably affect damages based on future earnings.
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:2)
Well, if it's simple legality involved then its the goverment's responsiblity to sort out, not Novell's. The only relevant question to this case is whether MS performed illegal acts that directly resulted in a 40% drop in WordPerfect's market share.
Reading Novell's filing it sounds like the integration of browsing in Windows was one of the main illegal acts. What this has to do with WordPefect, I don't know.
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a bit of a grey area, but I think the fact that MSs Office and Windows divisions were told to keep some distance from each other a few years back is relevant. Ie, the Office team aren't to be given preferential treatment and knowledge over 3rd parties.
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:5, Insightful)
Then to top it off, they force all dealerships to only sell Ford tires after Goodyear has the new product.
How much more anti-competitive can you get? They forced companies out of business with contracts, false information, and lies. It is business, but they crossed the lines into Anti-competitive territory.
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:2)
It was game over long before Windows 95 or even before Novell bought the WordPerfect.
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked for WordPerfect as a Software Tester (Software Quality Engineer) between 1992 and 1994 so I have first-hand knowledge of how slimy Microsoft's competitive tactics were. When I started working at WP, they owned over 90% of the PC Word Processing market. MS set their sights on them and stooped to all kinds of levels to rub them out of the market. As a matter of fact, on the WP campus in Orem, UT, we had an entire building called building S that was dedicated to Security. Rows and rows of black and white TVs connected up to closed circuit cameras planted all over the campus. There were hundreds of them. You see, MS had a habit of hiring corporate spies to sit in the parking lot with binoculars and write down code snippets they saw on white-boards in the developers offices. Dumpster diving, you name it, all sorts of corporate espionage went on. They had more security there than most defense contractors. They had to. Microsoft has always played a dirty game.
The first few versions of WordPerfect for Windows were by default crippled because Microsoft kept the (important) Windows APIs undocumented. Any new features that WordPerfect was working on behind closed doors were somehow stolen and announced in a press release by MS the day before WP had scheduled a press release to announce them. There were half a dozen employees in the marketing department and even development that were found to be on MS payroll and ended up getting fired.
Microsoft is one of the most unethical companies I know of. Their tactics should land them in the corporate malfeasance hall of fame along with the likes of Enron, but instead, they are worshipped as the darling of Wall Street.
As one of many former WordPerfect engineers who was sad to see such a great company get rubbed out of the market, I can tell you first hand that MS Word would be a much better program right now if it had any legitimate competitors.
Windows Server would also be a much better server product if they hadn't used their dominance on the Windows desktop to rub Novell out of the server market as well, although, in that case, Novell hastened their own doom by refusing to acknowledge that IPX was doomed and TCP/IP was the wave of the future.
It's good to see Novell finally doing what they should have done 10 years ago... stick it to those anti-competitive mo-fos.
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:2, Informative)
Interesting post, but I don't agree that IPX was the cause of Novells loss of market share. I was able to dump IPX on my NetWare networks in late 98 and early 99. Before that we did use IP and route it on our NetWare boxes. And when Novell dumped it, they dumped it - no encapsulating their old protoculs in tcp/ip as Windows did (does?).
NetWare (and all the benefits
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:2)
This has got to be the biggest BS I have seen on slashdot
What clown modded you down? (Score:2)
You should have been modded "wasn't born yesterday".
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft vs Enron (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:3, Interesting)
Whereas I worked for a company that signed an 8000 seat site license with WordPerfect for the very first version of WordPerfect for Windows (5.1 iirc - we definately had at least one and maybe two releases before the first really widespread one (5.2 again iirc)).
I will grant you that Microsoft probably wasn't playing fair with the
Re:Wasn't WP a monopoly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wasn't WP a monopoly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite possibly they did have an effective monopoly, yes. The key point is that having an effective monopoly is not illegal. Using your monpoly position to unfairly leverage other products - that is what gets you in trouble.
Jedidiah
Re:Wasn't WP a monopoly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but as others have already pointed out, having a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. It's what you do with that monopoly that matters. WordPerfect was an ethical company. They treated their employees and customers well, and gave FREE technical support to all of their customers. I'll leave it for you to decide who you would rather have as your corporate master.
Re:Word Perfect for Windows was horrible (Score:3, Insightful)
WP - OpenOffice? (Score:2)
If a project is going to go bankrupt might as well replease it as a GPL, you've really have little to lose, which is why I was diapointed that 321 studios didn't release their copying software before shutting down.
Diversity of opinion (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Diversity of opinion (Score:2)
Wordperfect was a superior product... (Score:5, Insightful)
-h3dge
Re:Wordperfect was a superior product... (Score:2)
WordPerfect Legal Edition 7 is a 16-bit version that will run on either Windows 3.x or 95 platform. The 32-bit version for Windows 95 is under development.
Re:Wordperfect was a superior product... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sure Wordperfect would have excelled in exporting to HTML format.
MS Word, on the other hand... well you know the story.
I guess this was the REAL reason for MS to launch windows. Not to provide a Multitasking environment, but to provide an envir
That time already? (Score:5, Funny)
It doesn't matter if they can prove it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It doesn't matter if they can prove it (Score:2, Interesting)
"no enforcement technique can control them [Microsoft]"
I disagree; there is an enforcement technique to control them.
On top of paying the money, let them lose copyright/patent over a percentage of their lines of codes/applications equivalent to the market share lost by the other company.
Letting the other company choose what MS copyrights/patents are lost, of course. Otherwise MS would dump sol.exe and clippy. Think of the brain damage a free clippy would cause! (-;
At that rate, ALL windows code should b
Re:It doesn't matter if they can prove it (Score:2)
2. Sue Microsoft and settle for 0.1% of their war chest.
Re:It doesn't matter if they can prove it (Score:2)
"Less than 1% of their war chest"? That's a rather weak prediction. Microsoft has a $40 billion war chest. This puts an upper limit of $400 million on the check.
I'll bet Novell wins this case easily and receives a check amounting to 0.0000000025% of Microsoft's war chest.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It doesn't matter if they can prove it (Score:2)
Sure there are techniques (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of stating 'no enforcement technique can control them', perhaps you should be asking 'Why has the government failed at enforcing existing anti-trust laws'.
Should politics really have the control they do over the enforcement of laws?
And should business have the control it does over politics?
The fact that a single business can make a big contribution to a political party and then get away from federal procecution is nothing short of a scandal. The fact that it's not is one of the biggest things which irritates me about US politics today.
The american people seem to have reached a kind of point where they've completely quit looking forward and outward on ways to improve their society. Any long-term issue in US politics is treated as if it was insolvable. When the international perspective shows that the problem is actually US-specific, and that it has been solved elsewhere, we shrug and say 'Ah, well that's over there. The US is different.'
The USA is not fundamentally different. It's yet another democratic market-economy in a world with dozens of them. Sure the USA is unique in ways. Sure there are cultural differences, and political differences and so on. But that doesn't mean that there are no solutions.
It means that people are disregarding them, because, ultimately, they don't want things to change.
Ok, end of rant.
A lot of their complaints appear to be about IE (Score:4, Informative)
They also claim that Microsoft represented Windows 95 as a 32 bit operating system even though it wasn't. Which is a wierd claim.
Re:A lot of their complaints appear to be about IE (Score:2)
complaints about IE ?? - was no WWW in 1991 !! (Score:3, Insightful)
How on earth can WP complain about lack of hooks into IE, when the WWW (well, the browser portion) didn't even exist in 1991-1992 !!
And if you do a help/about in IE, it says copyright 1995-2004
Re:complaints about IE ?? - was no WWW in 1991 !! (Score:2)
Re:A lot of their complaints appear to be about IE (Score:2)
That's the part I'm not understanding, why are they harping on about IE? The last time I wanted to be able to browse the web from within my wordprocessor was, umm let's see.. Never. They are aware that windows is a multitasking environment, yes? Or do they close their wordprocessor every time they want to see their desktop, to load something else?
Re:A lot of their complaints appear to be about IE (Score:2)
History (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:History (Score:2, Informative)
Re:History (Score:2)
I've also heard that MS released and changed specs on their external developers several times, which might explain WHY they would encounter reluctance. But again, I don't have any documentation.
Re:History (Score:2)
When they released Windows 3.0, Word and Excel were the only productivity apps available. Lotus & WordPerfect had bet on OS/2 and lost.
Re:History (Score:2)
Re:History (Score:3, Informative)
November 2004
1980s WordPerfect is the leading word processor software when most PCs ran character-based operating systems such as MS-DOS and DR DOS.
1985 Microsoft introduced early versions of Windows® with a graphical user interface (GUI).
WordPerfect for several reasons decided not to write a version of its product for Windows, and deliberately delaying writing software for Windows as way of trying to hurt Microsoft.
"We didn't write for Windows" because" we were rooting for an
Word Sucks (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Word Sucks (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Word Sucks (Score:3, Interesting)
Then, of course, Microsoft leveraged its Windows OS dominance into office suite dominance: if you bundled something other than Office (instead of WP Suite or Lotus Suite)
Re:Word Sucks (Score:2)
For a good read, you might want to see
http://www.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html
Re:Word Sucks (Score:2)
Re:Word Sucks (Score:2)
Old MS Motto: (Score:2, Interesting)
True then, probably true now.
Novell finally getting justice after many years (Score:5, Informative)
Tactic to get revenue (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Tactic to get revenue (Score:2)
Re:Tactic to get revenue (Score:2)
Re:Tactic to get revenue (Score:2)
The argument is that MSFT is to blame for a lot of that loss in value
Just stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
If you read Novell's complaint they mention Microsoft's integration of IE into windows, which was the reason WordPerfect failed.
Browsing has nothing to do with word processing, and I just don't buy that "... the integration of browsing functions into Windows, coupled with Microsoft's refusal to publish certain of these functions was a primary strategy for excluding Novell's application
I believe they're just trying to piggyback on the Anti-trust law suite that was filed against MicroSoft by the US government.
I'd be very surprised if the court would even consider their claims.
Novell, be happy with the 500 something million dollars you got for Netware and move on!
Novell: Thanks for the money, now lets go to court (Score:2)
Glad to see (Score:2, Interesting)
Anticompetitive Behaviour (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, this may partially be true, but MS has a documented history of forcing business partners to nullify contracts with companies that make products that could compete with Microsoft's. This is a huge problem, and very easily could lead to the death of a product. Using their contracts with IBM as an example, if MS demands that IBM no longer sell PCs with WordPerfect as the word processor, and threaten to yank all Windows licenses if they do not comply, two things happen: 1. IBM drops WordPerfect out of necessity, given that 95% of desktops run Windows and that IBM cannot sell a PC without it, and 2. Wordperfect dies a quick death. If losing a contract with IBM, which would have guaranteed hundreds of thousands of sales, is not enough, then they die as the same MS strong-arm techniques are applied to other PC manufacturers like Sony, Compaq, HP, Gateway, etc.
The net result? Wordperfect heavily declines by being illegally muscled out of its main business. Then, with no fresh capital, it cannot integrate newer and more innovative features that consumers demand, and eventually dies from being unable to compete. In the end, Microsoft blames a poor product, while in reality illegal and anticompetitive business practices killed it long before.
When will the US government impose a worthwhile and equitable penalty that actually means something to a company with nearly 50 BILLION in cash saved up?
Re:Anticompetitive Behaviour (Score:2)
I think having 50 billion in cash excluded from circulation by being hoarded by one company cant possibly have any *good* effect on the economy.
Re:Anticompetitive Behaviour (Score:2)
Yahoo vs. Yahoo! (Score:2)
Is some poor bastard going to get screwed on copyright violation if people forget the "!"? Similarly, if court ducuments omit the "!", does this render claims invalid?
Maybe people should start putting odd, difficult-to reproduce keyboard characters into their company names.
Re:Yahoo vs. Yahoo! (Score:2)
Re:Yahoo vs. Yahoo! (Score:2)
Typically, you want your brandname to be easy to remember, and certainly easy to pronounce - otherwise, it'll become more difficult for you to gain market penetration. If Joe Bloggs can't be sure how to pronounce a product he's pitching to his boss, the chances of said boss deciding to go with it over something easier to remember begin to drop.
Hey! My product failed! (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously. These lawsuits are getting fucking crazy. It seems that every product which has failed will eventually seek damages from Microsoft. Sure, some of their business tactics are shady, but they work. When aiming for maximum profit, why wouldn't a company seek to enter into new, profitable markets? These business practices, such as withholding information, are good ones. Hell, if I owned a business, I
Re:Hey! My product failed! (Score:4, Insightful)
MS *has been found guilty* in a court of law. Eg, they are a convict. Why isnt someone in jail? Why are they allowed to *CONTINUE* breaking the same laws?
Re:Hey! My product failed! (Score:2)
Re:Hey! My product failed! (Score:2)
weak (Score:2, Insightful)
They complain about missing API etc but no specifics, then again we all know what happens when you use undocumented functions.. they become incompatible in later oses. I imagine their complaints are based on the reasoning, "You published API's to open/save/print documents in win
Forced to dump WordPerfect (Score:5, Interesting)
Then we merged with another department who were MS Word users. The new head of department demanded that everyone use MS Word. His justification was that they made the operating system and so the office package must be the best. All the WordPerfect users were forced to switch. They were stunned at how awkward many functions were in MS Word, the lack of power, the interference of the automatic features, and the numerous bugs. I have had to replace a couple destroyed keyboards from users that went ape over the frustrations of using MS Word. They switched to MS Word 7 years ago and they still complain.
The university made a deal with Microsoft so that we could install Office on any university system we wanted and staff could use it on home computers for free. WordPerfect can't match it. To make matters worse, Corel have dramatically increased the price on the academic edition of WordPerfect and the money people won't let me buy a single copy.
Pretty much, the whole world uses MS Office these days. For anyone else who has used any other product, you KNOW that something is wrong when something so mediocre has total market dominance.
wp was very buggy (Score:2, Interesting)
So we moved to ms word, which didnt crash quite so often and didnt trash your document unless it was a full moon.
If only open office existed then.
At my current employer we use ms office and it doesnt crash, but does very weird things when formatting text, setting up templates is a nightmare and dde/ole gets to be REAL pain in
WordPerfect? MS-Word? (Score:3, Interesting)
First off, there is not any great amount of M$ software at this location, windoze is not allowed on the premises.
Second off, I have a copy of WordPerfect 8 here, sitting on the shelf, never been installed. Paid $75 for it with taxes and all.
Why isn't it installed? Well, lets just say that in Corels infinite paranoia, they made gawd damned sure it would only run on one specific linux, theirs, of a certain release only and untouched by human hands for any updates etc.
But they didn't say that on the box of course because that would have torpedoed what sales they had. When I found it wouldn't install on RedHat by straceing the installer, I took it back to the store,and was basicly told to go pound sand, the box has been opened so we cannot refund.
Of course the fscking box was opened, how the hell else was I supposed to find out if it would install? Some sort of magic xray eyed genie to peek at the tracks on the cd and see if it would work? Mmm, well lets just say that those are in somewhat short supply around here, they are all out watching what J-Lo and Ben are up to next.
As far as I'm concerned, Corel, now Novell, owes me 75 bucks. Or a working copy of WordPerfect 8.
No Cheers this time, Gene
Re:We need to ask ourselves... (Score:3, Insightful)
Money is the main motivator for Novell, so they are neither the good or the bad guys, they are a potentially usefull ally to others who are into open source software to make money, and to the open source community (whatever that may be)
And as can be seen, they can also be a pain in the ass if they happen to have an issue with you and think they can get some money out of it.
Re:Is quality an issue? (Score:2)
Re:Is quality an issue? (Score:2)
Re:Go underdog go!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
shooting yourself in the foot (Score:3, Interesting)
Amicus, HotDocs and Deal Proof links disappeared with the legal suite. Though some legal-specific features were retained in WordPerfect 2002, the legal suite enjoyed great popularity and its demise undermined Corel's standing with lawyers, especially solos and small firms, which liked the bundled third party legal software."
Shackled to Microsoft: What It Means To The Legal Profession [senseient.com]
Re:Word(perfect) (Score:2)
Re:Repetitive convictions (Score:2)
Re:Repetitive convictions (Score:2)
Re:Repetitive convictions (Score:2)
Having an illegal behaving monopoly is a civil matter, not a criminal one, so your question is meaningless in the context of this suit.