Comments

• twitter

  2011-02-10 23:53:50

  Ah, Bruce Byfield, an apologist always making defeat sound reasonable. Where can a person start with that one? How about the early 90's? Here's what the old man says he remembers about Word Perfect:
  
  

  In effect, many people accept that because free software alternatives are less widely known, their users must acquiesce to what is common. Just as in the early 1990s, WordPerfect filters for Microsoft Office had to be better than Microsoft Office filters for WordPerfect

  
  
  The problem with that line of reasoning is that none of it is true. Word Perfect was dominant in the early 90's and technically superior. At that time, Microsoft was just beginning their political push to force Microsoft Office on schools, governments and other influential users. They had about as many users as OOXML does today. The bribes and corruption were about the same but the set of lies was different, they pushed "cost". The change was disruptive, costly and fought everywhere it happened.
  
  Byfield presents the ODF side incompletely and with similar half backed logic to conclude that OOXML is some kind of convenience factor. OOXML is not convenient to anyone. It's something that requires the user to go out and buy a $400 program, while ODF can be satisfied with a free download. This is why no one is using OOXML, not even Microsoft Office users. Every time they send something out, they get a slew of letters from people who have not spent lots of money on the new Office and they quickly learn not to offend people by using other formats. OOXML "filters" from Novell are defective by design, which is what the documents Groklaw dug up prove. Some features were just not going to be supported and that was part of the contract. Including these broken filters in Libre Office only sets people up for frustration and patent attacks. Developers are bright enough to know that and their protest is good news.
  
  Microsoft will go bankrupt before OOXML is a real problem. Developers should ignore it and distros should especially ignore code from Novell.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2011-02-11 12:29:10

  For those who want to know the real WordPerfect story, here is an excerpt from ECIS:
  
  

  E. Microsoft’s Elimination Of Word Perfect

  
  
  

  “If we own the key ‘franchises’ built on top of the operating system, we

  dramatically widen the ‘moat’ that protects the operating system business…. We
  hope to make a lot of money off these franchises, but even more important is that

  7

  they should protect our Windows royalty per PC.”
  –Jeff Raikes, Microsoft President⁴³

  
  
  

  “I have decided that we should not publish these [Windows 95 user interface]
  extensions. We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration
  that will be harder for likes of Notes, WordPerfect to achieve, and which will give
  Office a real advantage…. We can’t compete with Lotus and WordPerfect/Novell
  without this.”
  –Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and then-CEO⁴⁴

  
  
  

  Beginning in 1994, Microsoft launched an anticompetitive campaign to extinguish
  WordPerfect, an office productivity application owned by Novell and competing with
  Microsoft’s Office suite. Office productivity applications (including word processing,
  spreadsheet, and presentation applications) are one of the most important groups of applications
  and contribute substantially to the applications barrier to entry protecting Microsoft’s operating
  system monopoly.

  When Microsoft began this campaign, WordPerfect enjoyed widespread popularity. In
  
  
  order to eliminate its competitor, Microsoft withheld crucial technical information about
  Windows, going so far as to extend the Windows API, the set of commands a program uses to
  communicate with the operating system, to ensure that WordPerfect did not work smoothly with
  Microsoft’s monopoly operating system.⁴⁵ Microsoft also used its monopoly power to control
  industry standards, thus requiring WordPerfect to implement proprietary technology or risk
  incompatibility with Windows.⁴⁶ And it excluded WordPerfect from the major channels of
  
  
  distribution for office productivity applications.⁴⁷ For example, Microsoft forbade OEMs from
  pre-installing Novell products and gave discounts for refusing to sell other developers’ office
  productivity applications.⁴⁸ As part of Microsoft’s strategy to eliminate Novell, “[a] top
  Microsoft executive wrote that Microsoft should ‘smile’ at Novell, falsely signifying Microsoft’s
  willingness to help the two companies’ common customers integrate their various products,

  
  
  

  8

  
  while actually ‘pulling the trigger’ and killing Novell.”⁴⁹ Microsoft’s tactics were, again,
  extremely successful, as shown in the graphic below.⁵⁰

  

  
  
  

  Microsoft extinguished WordPerfect and gained a monopoly in office productivity application
  
  
  suites, accomplishing its goal of “dramatically widen[ing] the moat” protecting its lucrative
  Windows monopoly.

  
  
  [...]
  
  

  ⁴⁵
  
  
  See Complaint ۦۦ 56, 6972, Novell, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., No. JFM-05-1087, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11520
  (D. Md. June 10, 2005).

  ⁴⁶
  See id. ۦۦ 8494.
  
  
  

  ⁴⁷
  See id. ۦ 112.
  

  ⁴⁸
  See id. ۦ 117.

  
  
  

  ⁴⁹
  See id. ۦ 55.

  ⁵⁰
  Fred Vogelstein, Search and Destroy, FORTUNE, May 2, 2005, at 74, available at

  
  
  

  http://money.cnn.com/

  magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/05/
  02/8258478/index.htm (showing
  “Microsoft’s Battles” market share graphics). In 1993, WordPerfect accounted for more than 40% of word
  processing software sales, with annual sales of $700 million. See Complaint ۦ 150, Novell, Inc. v. Microsoft
  Corp., No. JFM-05-1087, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11520 (D. Md. June 10, 2005). By 1996, WordPerfect’s
  
  
  share of sales had dropped to less than 10%, with annual sales of only $200 million. See id.
  

• dyfet

  2011-02-11 12:21:27

  So he dumps meego, makes windows mobile the future of the company, and the stock promptly collapses this morning. Sometimes even the markets recognize a loosing strategy.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2011-02-11 12:26:05

  Yes, I will cover this later today. Thanks.