06.18.09
Microsoft on Competition: “We Need to Create the Reputation for Problems and Incompatibilities to Undermine Confidence”
Summary: Microsoft is vandalising not only competing products of ‘partners’ but also their reputation
YESTERDAY we wrote about saboteurs and FUD against OS/2, showing that Microsoft may have even broken the law in order to advance its agenda. Today we deal with another court exhibit, Exhibit plex_5401 (1991) [PDF]. It may be old, but it was never made widely accessible to the public, so we share it here and explain how it relates to the present.
Brad Silverberg, one of Microsoft’s most aggressive people (he said “cut those f*ckers off” when a company chose DR-DOS), is herein expressing and defining Microsoft FUD. Cameron Myhrvold, the brother of Microsoft's patent troll (Nathan Myhrvold), is in circulation as well and both are currently in Ignition Partners, which seemingly helped the hijack of Xen.
Watch what Silverberg writes:
>From bradsi Thu Oct 24 09:18:30 1991
To: samt
Subject: Re: DR DOS, will they/won’t they buyDate: Wed Oct 23 16:16:23 1991
This is a very important point. We need to create the reputation
for problems and incompatibilies to undermine confidence
in drdos6; so people will make judgements against it without
knowing details or fats. it’s will be tricky to do;
we should dig up as many user stories as possible. compare
drdow6 to dos4; ibm has expereince will building bad/incompat
dos’s.we should think how we can get this down.
(done).
That sounds very clearly like a plan to misbehave. Further down it is also shown that “kathybe” invites these chaps to the OS/2 briefing. She says: “I have not heard back from you.”
From kathybe Wed Oct 23 17:16:34 1991
To: adamwa alistair andys bobmu bradsi cameronm carls claraj davidt
davidtu davidwo dwaynew ericfo gregl karlst kevine markclbobt nikim
perttir randyk roberth stewc tycar vesas
Cc: Corptech
Subject: URGENT – Can You Come on 10/29?
Date: Wed Oct 23 17:13:24 PDT 1991You were invited to attend the rehearsal presentation of the OS/2
Issue Account District Briefings on 10/29. I have not heard back from you.We need you to review these presentations to ensure that the info
we are presenting to customers and the field is correct. We will be
doing six (6) districts over the next eight weeks which covers 70
Yesterday we saw what kind of OS/2 presentations Steve Ballmer was giving. He put in an application which was specifically designed (by Microsoft) to crash OS/2 and ruin the demonstrations.
It’s all something to bear in mind now that Microsoft is trying to prove ODF is broken. Microsoft was an IBM and OS/2 partner at this time of sabotage and FUD. Now it is pretending to be an ODF partner with IBM, Sun, Oracle, Google, Red Hat and so on. Needless to say, Microsoft is still badmouthing ODF behind the scenes and it is reducing ODF interoprability [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. █
Appendix: Comes vs. Microsoft – exhibit plex_5401, as text
Tim Brewer
>From timbr Thu Oct 17 17:47:17 1991
To: cameroom viktorg
Cc: bradsi davidool jeffbe lisacr
Subject: Lotus AMI Pro 2.00 wrongly shipped COMMDLG.DLL from 6/14/91…
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 91 17:48:05 PDTHi Cameron and Viktor – Apparently, Lotus wrongly shipped COMMDLG with
thier AMI Pro 2.00 product. They picked up the beta 1 COMMDLG which was
NOT included in the list of files available for redistribution. We need
to contact them, have them update to the beta 2 release of COMMDLG and
notify their customer base that they need to upgrade COMMDLG or they may
affect other software components that use COMMDLG.We did not give them permission nor did they ask anyone here to include
COMMDLG with AMI Pro 2.00. They also ship OLECLI and OLESVR from beta 1
which is fine.This issue was broght to my attention because it is affecting
OC/Windows. (JeffBe has more details if you want them)Please look into this asap. If you have any questions, please let me
know.Thanks,
Tim Brewer##################################################### 235
From garygi Wed Oct 23 16:49:21 1991
To: bradsi
Subject: EMAIL auto_notifyRe: reg win users
Received OK on Wed Oct 23 16:49User Message follows
——————–At Comdex until Friday 10/25.
##################################################### 236
From susanb Wed Oct 23 16:49:42 1991
To: bradsi
Subject: EMAIL auto_notifyRe: reg win users
Received OK on Wed Oct 23 16:49User Message follows
——————–
A combination of jury duty, two European launch tours and some
vacation time will keep me out of the office almost
continuously until Noverber 11. I’ll check in on email
and by phone. Peggyk can reach me or forward your requests
to the appropriate ebu manager. Or try one of the following:
Malindaf for marketing issues
Tomr for development issues
Brucej or Arts for program management issues
Rogersh for testing issues
Betsyd for user ed issues.##################################################### 237
From bradc Wed Oct 23 17:01:52 1991
To: bradsi
Subject: RE: more on rom dos
Date: Wed Oct 23 17:02:18 PDT 1991great, thanks.
I have already explained to him the difference, he gets confused b/cthe delivery vehicle to oems is called the rom addendum.
on another matter it appears that i have to go to monterey on sunday
b/c you and joachimk can’t go to this phoenix thing. remember that
CONFIDENTIAL
MSC 00726592
MX 6164977
CONFIDENTIALPlaintiff’s Exhibit
5401
Comes V. MicrosoftRBC 003451
you volunteered you or me? as i indicated b4, i don’t want to go to
be honest and am very bummed. i am your very loyal gpm but would
you mind if i asked you to checking with me first b4 volunteering me
for travel?brad2
>From bradsi Wed Oct 23 16:31:25 1991
To: bradc
Subject: more on rom dosDate: Wed Oct 23 16:31:07 1991
I spoke to paul sherer yesterday. he asked about apm
and I told him we would be announcing it soon ; we’d
comment fully then. He also had the impression it would
ONLY work with rom dos.##################################################### 238
From dennisad Wed Oct 23 17:03:54 1991
To: bradsi davidcol
Subject: Re: ppt
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 17:03:49 PDTYup. Already agreed with Dave that I would come up with the “migration
sheet” for ppt.##################################################### 239
From sami Wed Oct 23 17:04:18 1991
To: bradsi
Subject: Re: DR DOS, Will they/won’t they buy
Date: Thu Oct 24 09:59:42 PDT 1991Well …
I hadn’t exactly meant to put it across
that way,but …
You hit the nail on the head.
>From bradsi Thu Oct 24 09:18:30 1991
To: samt
Subject: Re: DR DOS, will they/won’t they buyDate: Wed Oct 23 16:16:23 1991
This is a very important point. We need to create the reputation
for problems and incompatibilies to undermine confidence
in drdos6; so people will make judgements against it without
knowing details or fats. it’s will be tricky to do;
we should dig up as many user stories as possible. compare
drdow6 to dos4; ibm has expereince will building bad/incompat
dos’s.we should think how we can get this down.
(done).##################################################### 240
From bradc Wed Oct 23 17:08:59 1991
To: bradsi
Subject: RE: FW: apm/ms-dos 5 rom update
Date: Wed Oct 23 17:09:42 PDT 1991yup,good point – this was meant to discuss rom dos only but the
message could be confused.we will check with ray.
MSC 00726593
MX 6164978
CONFIDENTIALRBC 003452
>From bradsi Wed Oct 23 16:30:13 1991
To: bradc
Subject: FW: apm/ms-dos 5 rom updateDate: Wed Oct 23 16:29:55 1991
I don’t understand this mail, brad. it doesn’t say
anything about file transfer. It amkes it seem like power
manager ONLY works with ROM DOS. That’s VERY confusing.We should make it very clear that all the pieces work
with DISK-BASED ms-dos too.In addition, we should ask rayka where all the oem’s are
for rom dos? we got lots of rather nasty mail from
him about our mistakes; i’d like to know where the customers
are now.##################################################### 241
From davidool Wed Oct 23 17:12:00 1991
To: bradsi
Subject: XGA driver
Date: Wed Oct 23 17:11:18 1991Cool, sound like comdex is windex for real…that’s
GREAT! I started reading paul sherer’s article,
but didn’t finish…hope to finish tonight.Some ISVs and OEMs got the spec, I can find the
exact list if thats important.On the issue of what to ship, we have some talking
to do. Disk space is looking pretty grim for adding
much at all. Are we absolutely hardcore about not
adding another disk. The AGFA guys were here today
and talked about how many fonts are in PCL 5
printers. They claim 26.5 million fonts in printers,
just counting CG Times and Universe. Shipping a TrueType
version of those would certainly be great for a large %
of Windows users.See ya when you get back.
##################################################### 242
From viktorg Wed Oct 23 17:15:29 1991
To: cameronm timbr
Cc: bradsi davidool jeffbe lisacr
Subject: Re: Lotus AMI Pro 2.00 Wrongly shipped COMMDLG.DLL from
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 91 17:13:18 PDT
6/14/91…I’ll give them a call tomorrow (Thursday.) FYI, I have experimented with
this, and it does seem to overwrite a newer version of the DLL – ie, it
left my beta II version of COMMDLG intact.
If I’m correct (I will verify with Lotus,) than there should be no problem
with OC/Win – let me know if you have different data (essentially, I need
to determine the urgency/gravity of the problem, as AMI has shipped already.)thx, viktor
##################################################### 243
From kathybe Wed Oct 23 17:16:34 1991
To: adamwa alistair andys bobmu bradsi cameronm carls claraj davidt
davidtu davidwo dwaynew ericfo gregl karlst kevine markclbobt nikim
perttir randyk roberth stewc tycar vesas
Cc: Corptech
Subject: URGENT – Can You Come on 10/29?
Date: Wed Oct 23 17:13:24 PDT 1991You were invited to attend the rehearsal presentation of the OS/2
Issue Account District Briefings on 10/29. I have not heard back from you.We need you to review these presentations to ensure that the info
we are presenting to customers and the field is correct. We will be
doing six (6) districts over the next eight weeks which covers 70MSC 00726594
MX 6164979
CONFIDENTIALRBC 003453
Credit: wallclimber and RCH.
