Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft on Competition: “We Need to Create the Reputation for Problems and Incompatibilities to Undermine Confidence”

Angry girl



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 buy

Date: 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 1991

You 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 PDT

Hi 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_notify

Re: reg win users Received OK on Wed Oct 23 16:49

User Message follows --------------------

At Comdex until Friday 10/25.

##################################################### 236 From susanb Wed Oct 23 16:49:42 1991 To: bradsi Subject: EMAIL auto_notify

Re: reg win users Received OK on Wed Oct 23 16:49

User 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 1991

great, thanks. I have already explained to him the difference, he gets confused b/c

the 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 CONFIDENTIAL

Plaintiff's Exhibit 5401 Comes V. Microsoft

RBC 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 dos

Date: 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 PDT

Yup. 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 1991

Well ...

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 buy

Date: 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 1991

yup,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 CONFIDENTIAL

RBC 003452

>From bradsi Wed Oct 23 16:30:13 1991 To: bradc Subject: FW: apm/ms-dos 5 rom update

Date: 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 1991

Cool, 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 1991

You 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

MSC 00726594

MX 6164979 CONFIDENTIAL

RBC 003453



Credit: wallclimber and RCH.

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