The London Stock Exchange will switch on the first module of its Linux and Unix-based trading platform in September, replacing existing Microsoft .Net architecture.
IBM will be required to meet security standards established by the government’s Information Assurance guidelines for all networks. The Air Force says its network manages the operations of nine major commands, almost 100 bases and 700,000 active military personnel worldwide.
The X.org and kernel developers are working on drivers to support the DirectX 11 graphics cards in AMD’s Radeon HD 5000 series. While the proprietary AMD drivers have been supported for some time, not even the latest, recently released version co-operates with X Server 1.7, which has already been available for several months. The kernel developers have released numerous new stable kernels and are discussing the integration of utrace in great detail.
Now the size of a stock Linux kernel and the size of the initrd in a vanilla installation of Ubuntu 9.10 are not necessarily related, but I could swear this was never a problem before now. I am more-or-less certain that I have installed minimal Ubuntu systems on computers with only 32Mb of memory — some within the past couple of years — and they started up fine. And Debian runs without complaint on the machine, although I haven’t needed to check the size of the initrd in Debian, so it might be different. (It appears to be less than 8Mb for initrd.img-2.6.32-trunk-486.)
Two days ago we reported on hybrid graphics coming to Linux in a crude form that allowed switching between graphics processors on notebook computers that utilize dual graphics processors, one that’s meant to deliver the best energy efficient performance while the other GPU is for maximizing the graphics performance in demanding environments. Just 24 hours after this kernel patch hit the Internet it already went through four revisions by Red Hat’s David Airlie, which delivered better switching and greater notebook compatibility. Since yesterday this patch has already undergone a few more revisions.
If you liked Winamp and thought you had to stop using it under Linux, well, think again. XMMS is a very light yet powerful audio player that looks and works very similar to Winamp.
I mentioned a script yesterday, so I’ll mention another one today — another sort of “download manager” for the console. This isn’t nearly as feature-ful as fttps, but since it approaches the issue in a concise and straightforward way, I thought it worth bringing to attention.
One of the most radical and highly-anticipated changes that is documented in the specifications is a new single-window mode, an optional view that brings together all of the floating windows and converges them into a single cohesive user interface. To get a hands-on look at this feature, I compiled GIMP 2.7.1 and its core dependencies—GEGL and Babl—from source code, which can be obtained from the GNOME git repository.
Since the invention of PDF format in 1993 PDF documents have become extremely popular tool for exchanging information across the Web. Even now PDF beats more recent DJVU and various e-book formats in terms of popularity.
I have used this toy to author a few documents and I must admit it is not half bad. You type in words, press some buttons and things happen. Unlike a WYSIWYG garbage-tron Lyx won’t just let you press enter a million times in lieu of proper vertical white space management. If you want to have vertical separation you need to break up your text into paragraphs, sections or insert special vertical space markers (as shown above). The environment gives you access to most of the popular commands you can pick from the drop down menus. It also ships with bunch of style templates you can load up and use. I don’t think you can directly import packages into your documents, but I guess the point of this tool is to keep things simple and easy.
Backing up data can be difficult, especially when you only want to copy files that changed since the last backup. It can be even more troublesome when you have to remember to start the process manually,or you have to delete old backups to make room for new ones. Because of these difficulties, some people decide not to back up data at all, and feel the pain when they accidentally delete the wrong file or their system crashes. TimeVault is a backup utility for Ubuntu that addresses these problems.
I look forward to hugs and beer over the weekend. However, it’ll be an unusual experience for me this year… This will be the first time that I am at FOSDEM “on business”. Much of my time during the event is already preallocated to various meetings. Sadly this leaves very little time for attending talks…
And yes, I’m just the sort of person who likes to mess with Alphas, so I downloaded the Kubuntu and Ubuntu versions, for the sheer unparalleled joy of seeing what’s new under the hood.
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Your Kubuntu and/or Ubuntu system comes with document readers that support a host a number of different formats. KDE has Okular, which I use to read the countless PDF manuals that envelop the information I need from time to time. It can also open JPG and PNG files, open document text files (ODT), but it can’t open plain text.
What kind of document reader doesn’t support plain text?
And before you GNOME users get too comfortable and start pointing fingers at KDE, allow me to point out that Evince, the multi-format document reader that comes with GNOME, does not support plain text either (click on the Figure to the right).
I like dabbling in web development and design and so I was quite happy to be able to participate in the redesign of the new KDE.org website due to release in conjunction with KDE SC 4.4 on February 9th. This was what I was working on during the past week and I must say I’ve learned and experienced quite a lot from trying to contribute.
With KDE Software Compilation v4.4.0 tagged and going through final release engineering processes, early reviews and discussions about it are appearing around the Internet. It’s great to see the interest bubbling around it all.
Hot on the heels of digiKam 1.0, Gilles Caulier announced the 1.1.0 release of the popular open source photo management application. While the main focus in version 1.1.0 was on squashing bugs, the new release of digiKam does sport a couple of new nifty features and improvements.
I remember recently trying the latest version of Kubuntu simple because I was getting sick of compiling with Gentoo. Well Kubuntu was fine and dandy. But when it came to install software I had to use the new KPackageKit and that was fine, it didn’t bother me. What came to bother me was that it’s a bloody pain in the arse to mess with.
Welcome to part 2 of our overview of the KDE 4.3 System Settings panel, the replacement for the old control panel of KDE 3.5. Today we’re going to look at two more master sections. Namely, Personal and Network & Connectivity. So sit back and enjoy.
Looking for other software sometimes makes try out a whole lot of different things. In this case I saw Bilbo, a blogging tool in KDE and so I was intrigued. The thing is that I wanted to go beyond trying out Bilbo. I ended up downloading KDE. There’s a Kubuntu desktop package in the repository so I decided to get it. There’s nothing to lose by trying out KDE anyway, [...] For two days’ worth of being in KDE, it is getting a little better by the second day, with all these things getting cleared up and working for me. The widgets aren’t so bad, really. I like it that I don’t have to install Tweetdeck and I also love the picture slideshow widget which gives me random images from an image directory in my laptop.
The GNOME Foundation is happy to announce a substantial donation from the Mozilla Corporation to benefit the GNOME Project’s accessibility efforts. The donation will help continue the collaborative efforts between GNOME and Mozilla on Accessibility.
I recently did an interview on Python with the Pardus Linux magazine. Pardus Linux is a distribution developed in Turkey (by the Turkish National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology) with the goal of being usable by “normal” people rather than just geeks.
Pardus are great supporters and users of Python. A while ago they chose Python as their standard language for custom package and configuration management tools.
There are various approaches to answering this question. The broad answer is: “any of them,” but that’s not very helpful if you’re just looking for a place to start.
The problem is, there never can be one best Linux distribution for everyone, because the needs of each user tend to be unique. Telling someone who’s looking for a good introductory distribution to try Gentoo, for instance, would be a mistake because for all its positive qualities, Gentoo is decidedly not a beginner’s distro.
What is Linux? It’s a free operating system that does everything Windows will do. Disclaimer: Linux is free in the sense of freewill more so than free beer! Any computer that is capable of running Windows is usually capable of running Linux. Linus Torvalds invented the original Linux kernel (the heart of the Linux operating system) in 1991. He released the source code and made it publicly downloadable. Anyone is free to download the Linux kernel and make their own version (or distributions as they’ve come to be called) of Linux. There are hundreds of distributions currently available.
The Elive Team is proud to announce the release of the development version 1.9.60
We are very close to the next stable Version of Elive 2.0! These are the last development versions coming so you are more than welcome to report bugs NOW! If you are an Elive-translator this is the moment to finish all the remaining Messages to be translated. Thank you!
I very excited about this release of VortexBox. We are moving from being just a media server to a music player as well. This version of VortexBox includes VortexBox Player. You can use your internal sound card or external USB DAC to play your music. VortexBox Player supports music recorded at up to 24-bit/192kHz. This is higher then most players support including the Sonos and SqueezeBox line of hardware players.
When Jim Whitehurst was named CEO of Red Hat, some Wall Street analysts had doubts because of his lack of experience running a software company.
Those doubts have been erased by the Raleigh company’s performance since Whitehurst, previously the chief operating officer at Delta Air Lines, took over in 2007. Throughout the recession, the company posted double-digit revenue growth. Its stock, meanwhile, has doubled since last March.
According to the Statistics page on the wiki, last week we passed 1 million IP checkins for Fedora 12 systems! This is roughly on par with where Fedora 11 was at the same time after its release, although it’s hard to discern the actual number of installations worldwide.
The credits for the catchy title go to legendary Thomas Dolby, but the real thanks go to the team of scientists, engineers and geeks at CERN, who developed this distribution.
If you’re into science, you will, sooner or later, run into Linux. Any serious mathematical, computational work is done on Linux. From amazing 3D movies to simulating the Big Bang over to crunching sparse matrices in a cloud and folding proteins at home, it all comes down to using Linux. As a single host, Linux is merely a machine, but it starts to shine in its hundreds and thousands.
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I was tremendously pleased with Scientific Linux. First, it’s a RedHat distro, which means you get the classic Linux usage model, excellent stability and many years of support. Second, it has everything you need – multimedia, desktop effects, Samba sharing, anything.
When Debian issues a point release, as it just did with the current Stable distribution Lenny going from the 5.0.3 to 5.0.4, it’s no big deal. They happen. But you don’t need to throw out your Lenny install CDs or do any kind of reinstallation.
Amber Graner: This Ubuntu Women interview in the Women of Ubuntu Series is with Jane Silber, the current Canonical COO, but as of March 1st, 2010, she will be taking the reins of Canonical as the CEO. More about this announcement and Jane’s history with Canonical can be found here (http://blog.canonical.com/?p=307). First I want to welcome you Jane, and thank you for taking part in this interview series.
Canonical and the Ubuntu community are busy polishing Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), a major upgrade set to debut in April 2010. But before the new Linux distribution arrives, the Ubuntu community will host an Ubuntu Global Jam from March 26 to March 28. The big question: Will customers and partners also join in the Jam? Should they? Here are some thoughts.
While desktop Ubuntu shines as the leader among Linux distributions, with analysts estimating their share up to 95 percent of the Linux desktop market, Ubuntu’s server version lags. Expect huge advances in Ubuntu server installations during 2010 as a result of Ubuntu improvements, customer concern as SunOS comes under Oracle control, and restlessness among the Red Hat user base. Unlike Ubuntu server clients, Red Hat server clients must pay license fees, necessary because many applications remain Red Hat specific. Troy expects the Ubuntu server to make substantial advances attaining more application support and certifications.
So, we’re looking for your input: will you give Yahoo+Bing a try and help Ubuntu a little, or will changing to Google be the first thing you do on any 10.04 machine? Perhaps more importantly, is Canonical’s move a step away from its free software roots while also arguably providing users with inferior search results by default, or just sound business sense?
Rather than bashing the hell out of Canonical for its evil, evil attempt to make more money (SHOCKING, I know!), and given my foolish optimism that Mother Nature threw up on me, I prefer to look at the full half of this whole shenanigan (this word is AWESOME btw) glass thing. (the whole shenanigan, in case you are not up-to-date with the news, is that Yahoo will now be the default web search client in Ubuntu, replacing the unarguably superior Google).
Qnap Systems has upgraded two of its Linux-based, SMB-focused network-attached storage (NAS) systems to incorporate Intel’s D410 Atom processors. The two-drive, 4TB TS-239 Pro II and the four-drive, 8TB TS-439 Pro II also feature Qnap NAS 3.2 management software, with new iSCSI and virtualization features, plus support for VMware’s vSphere4.
Wind River has rev’d its embedded development tool-suite for Linux and VxWorks. Upgraded software is said to include: the Wind River Workbench 3.2 integrated development environment, now synchronized with Eclipse 3.5; the JTAG-based Wind River On-Chip Debugging 3.2, which adds multi-core and multi-target support; and the Wind River Compiler 5.8.
U.K.-based Anders Electronics announced a Linux-ready ARM Cortex-A8 COM (computer on module) with up to 256MB of RAM, 512MB of flash storage, 10/100 Ethernet, and integrated WiFi. The CM-T3530 comes with Texas Instruments OMAP3503 or OMAP3530 CPUs clocked at up to 720MHz, has a touchscreen controller, includes a camera interface, according to the company.
Via Technologies announced a baseboard designed to integrate a previously released, Linux-ready Pico-ITXe board into a car’s instrument panel. The Epia-P710-D offers three Mini PCI Express slots, a SIM slot, SD card reader, plus USB, IDE, and SATA ports, according to the company.
Open stacks based on Linux, Qt and similar tools are in a much better position simply because more people and companies can participate and therefore create a larger pool of shared resources that is hard to impossible for a closed platform to match without joining in. (Let’s not forget that S60 is opening up, either, and bringing Qt along with it too.) I don’t know what the ultimate role Maemo itself will play in all of this, but in an open ecosystem it doesn’t need to be IKotH to be successful either, anymore than any of the Linux distributions need to be IKotH in the server space for server side Linux to flourish.
Nokia’s N900 is not a phone, OK. Well, it is a phone, in that it has a SIM slot, and you can use it to make voice calls. And it supports HSDPA and has a front facing camera so you can make video calls. But actually it is more a mini computer than a mobile phone.
The N900 runs a new operating system, Maemo 5, which is based on Linux and so is open to application development by third parties. No, Symbian isn’t going away, and no, it doesn’t look as though Nokia will push out a slew of Maemo-toting devices during 2010, but yes, Nokia does think there is a place for very high end, very capable mini computers with telephony. And the N900 is its way of showing us that.
Motorola and Verizon Wireless announced a mid-range Android phone sporting the former’s MotoBlur UI. Due for a March launch, the “Devour” offers a 3.1-inch HVGA capacitive touchscreen, a side-slider keyboard, three-megapixel camera, CDMA/EVDO 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and a full complement of apps, including Google Maps Navigation, says Motorola.
Days after a hacker broke open the inner multi-touch capabilities of Google’s Nexus One, Google announced it is now offering pinch-to-zoom capability on the Android phone via a software update. In other Google news, the company has posted pictures of the Linux-based Chrome OS running on a tablet prototype.
Google announced on Tuesday it has issued an over-the-air free software update for users of its new Nexus One smartphone. The update will come via the telephone network instead of having to plug it into a computer and download the software.
China-based HiVision is readying an Android-based “PWS700CA” netbook with a 600MHz Rockchip ARM9 processor and a 7-inch, WVGA touchscreen, and according to one preview, it’s likely to sell for under $100. HiVision also recently introduced a Linux-based “PWS700B” netbook, as well as an “EB-0600S” e-reader, says the company.
ARM CEO Warren East believes that netbooks will come to dominate the PC market – and it won’t be that long before it happens.
“Although netbooks are small today – maybe ten per cent of the PC market at most – we believe over the next several years that could completely change around and that could be 90 per cent of the PC market,” PC Pro says he says.
Given the fierce competition in the market of the tablets where all the big companies in the sector: Apple, Google and Microsoft have an alternative in the market or in development, a Spanish company presents after Apple a cheapest option, based on free software.
With the Apple iPad buzz going around, there can’t be a better time to demonstrate the ‘tablet’ implications of Google Chrome OS. Google has not yet released this netbook centric OS yet, but they are constantly in the news with updates of their Chrome OS. You may also want to watch this awesome first glimpse video on Chrome OS UI.
Linux accounted for roughly a third of the 35 million or so netbooks to ship globally last year, according to Jeff Orr, an analyst at ABI Research, and predictions looking ahead are generally rosy as well.
On smartphones, meanwhile, Android had snatched up 27 percent of the North American market by the end of last year, according to AdMob’s December Mobile Metrics report — and that’s surely increasing daily following the launch of Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) Nexus One.
True, the concerns and issues around Android’s openness, or lack thereof, have significant implications. This is further illustration of how Google may be the open alternative juxtaposed against Apple, but by adding its own strings and closures, Google is also leaving the door open for another, more open alternative. Perhaps Palm and its WebOS are an example, but again, it seems no matter what a company or consortium does, they still leave opportunity for a relatively more open alternative.
We have to speed up energy innovation to the pace demonstrated in the growth of the Internet if we are to prevent irreversible climate disruptions that will irreparably harm the planet for our children and all those that follow. The scale and speed of change required to ward off disaster cannot be achieved using conventional models. We need to constantly compress seven years of innovation into one – the pace described as innovating on “Internet time”.
This requires government policy action now to drive the adoption of open source methods, and open standards for us to move quickly enough to ward off this crisis. These open models have proved themselves in creating the Internet and enabling the extraordinary pace of business and societal innovation around it.
As Oracle digests Sun Microsystems, plenty of pundits are wondering what will become of Sun’s OpenOffice.org and StarOffice efforts. On the upside, Oracle says it will keep promoting OpenOffice.org. But our resident blogger hasn’t heard much about StarOffice’s fate…
According to reports from InfoWorld and Wired, the Symbian Foundation will announce that, starting today, its Symbian mobile operating system (OS) will be completely open source. Larry Berkin, Head of Global Alliances and General Manager for the Symbian Foundation, said that, “We’re open-sourcing 108 packages that will be available at the source code level”. The source, more than 40 million lines of code, is scheduled to be available on Symbian’s developer portal at 6 am Pacific Time (2 pm GMT).
According to FSF, the Eclipse Licence makes this free software but incompatible with the GPL. Still, this is a good, competitive move to promote competition rather than to kill competition as M$ always tries. One thing is sure. This move will make the smartphone software environment much more interesting, vibrant and full of choice.
Karen and Bradley discuss an update on the Google Books Settlement, some follow up from 0x1F regarding feedback on the mobile phones show, and discuss Karen’s new position as General Counsel.
In this episode: Three quarters of the Linux kernel code is written by developers being paid to do so and Facebook transforms PHP performance. We promise to give up the command line for two weeks and ask whether Ubuntu is wrong to switch the default search engine in Firefox from Google to Yahoo. Plus, we introduce two new sections.
Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier speaks with Benjamin ‘Mako’ Hill, researcher at MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media and the Sloan School of Management, as well as board member, contributor and advisor on open source projects from Ubuntu to Wikipedia.
These days everyone is familiar with at least the names of the most popular browsers, Internet Explorer, from Microsoft; Firefox, from the Mozilla Foundation; Chrome, from Google; Opera, from Opera Labs; and last on the list of well-known – Safari, from Apple.
One example of this is ISKME’s OER Commons, an open education network that focuses on the curation and federation of open content from over 200 content partners (such as NASA, MIT OpenCourseware, WGBH, and many others). This has evolved into the networking and professional development of teachers worldwide who collaborate on improving and creating open content. A key component of this work has been to help educate the educators about copyright and content licensing as well as to introduce social collaboration environments that serve as catalysts to encourage teachers and learners to the shift from a consumer culture of education (where teachers deliver and students buy) to one in which teachers and learners gain leadership and support to share and build expertise from within.
It’s amazing, the opportunities a disruptive technology can offer to those who take the time to learn it. If you know your Moodle, there are more than 100 jobs available, right now, today — and for some of them, you don’t even need to change out of your pajamas.
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Looking at some of the job descriptions gives immediate insights into why open source is so useful. Many of these job offers are for very specific modifications to Moodle. One can’t help but wonder how effective Moodle is, as a community, in reintegrating these kinds of efforts — but one thing is for certain: they’ve got a way better shot at it than Blackboard does.
FreeBSD is the most accessible and popular of the BSDs, has code at the heart of Darwin and Apple’s OS X, and has powered some of the more successful sites on the Web, including Hotmail, Netcraft and Yahoo!, which before the rise of Google was the busiest site on the internet.
The European Union’s Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR.eu) as of today is offering public administrations access to more than two thousand free and open source applications.
The OSOR is a platform where public administrations can exchange information and experiences and collaborate in developing free and open source software. The platform has managed to bring together more than 2000 such open source software applications in just sixteen months after its launch.
The Britain Loves Wikipedia scheme will see UK museums and galleries opening up to the free online encyclopaedia. Throughout February, volunteer authors can take part in special tours to document artworks and natural treasures at a total of 20 institutions.
More modern systems like SVN (subversion), Mercurial, Bzr (Bazaar) and Git offer developers newer opportunities to collaboratively develop software at scale. One of the companies caught in the middle of the evolution of version control is hosting vendor CVSdude, with more than 50,000 users.
It’s stuff like that that makes me wish I knew more about OOP. I am studying it on and off, but there’s still some concepts that I just can’t wrap my brain around at times, like exceptions. In my procedurally-attuned programming frame of mind, every time someone explains them to me, I think … “Well, if something *breaks* why don’t you just work with the return codes and work around that?” So, yah. Some stuff is still lost on me. I’m trying to figure it out though. Maybe it’s one of those things that doesn’t make sense so much when you apply it to PHP and it’s general usage of websites. A lot of the stuff I read about, I think how it would make much more sense if it were an actual application running.
A lot of commercial software comes with H.264 encoders and decoders, and some computers arrive with this software preinstalled. This leads a lot of people to believe that they can legally view and create H.264 videos for whatever purpose they like. Unfortunately for them, it ain’t so.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) draft for a “System Information API” specifies JavaScript functions for accessing the battery, CPU, sensors and other hardware characteristics of a device. For this purpose, the window.navigator object’s SystemInfo interface has to implement the get, set and watch methods. set can only be applied to some screen properties such as brightness and orientation, while all other hardware properties are marked as readonly. watch is used for monitoring readings, for example those of a heat sensor.
Between democracy and darkness stands the judiciary. It stands heads and shoulders above the judicial systems in Asia. But it is in rapid decline. Ahead is pitch darkness
Colin Gonsalves Delhi
In the 61st year of the republic, surely, India has transited into Kalyug. Surveys of the Union of India as well as expert reports published by the Arjun Sengupta committee and the NC Saxena Committee appointed by the Central government reveal that almost 77 per cent of the population in India are below the poverty line in terms of the food intake minimum standard of 2,400 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day, a standard set by the Planning Commission in 1979.
There are several classes of Boycotts, but I think that I may be the only person to boycott coke because they played and played a real crappy song in the radio some years back. I only ended that boycott when coke launched the Final Fantasy IX ad. This happened quite a few years back, but it serves as a perfect introduction for a boycott I started a few days ago.
I had been writing about the need to have an open codec associated with the new VIDEO tag present in HTML5. I had linked the petition to get youtube to support ogg/theora along with a second link that I later removed, a link to the same kind of petition for VIMEO
The House today overwhelmingly passed a bill aimed at building up the United States’ cybersecurity army and expertise, amid growing alarm over the country’s vulnerability online.
Security is rarely static. Technology changes both security systems and attackers. But there’s something else that changes security’s cost/benefit trade-off: how the underlying systems being secured are used. Far too often we build security for one purpose, only to find it being used for another purpose — one it wasn’t suited for in the first place. And then the security system has to play catch-up.
According to the New York Times, Google will be holding talks with Chinese government officials soon, which will likely determine the fate of Google’s operations in the country, and to what (if any) extent those operations will continue to exist.
Google, for good or bad reasons, has decided it would stop to gleefully agree to whatever the Chinese leglislators would dictate, and only a few commentators have so far realized the change it has been compared to any other companies.
For the first time in recent history, the lobbying, grassroots and advertising budget of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has surpassed the spending of BOTH the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee.
Davos is a small resort town in Switzerland best known for hosting the World Economic Forum (WEF), an annual meeting of global political and business elites. Every year the biggest boosters of the “neoliberal” economic policy agenda of deregulation, unfettered global trade and strict International Monetary Fund (IMF) rules for poor countries, convene at Davos to pat each other on the back.
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Fortunately, the famous pranksters, the Yes Men, were tracking events at Davos and jumped in to help with some of the “we have changed our ways” analysis the world was anxious to hear. They unveiled a fake WEF Webpage accompanied by paper and video press releases from some of the luminaries that frequently attend the forum.
Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) urged President Obama and all members of Congress not to attend this year’s National Prayer Breakfast, scheduled for February 4, 2010. The breakfast, designed to appear as if government-sanctioned, actually serves as a meeting and recruiting event for the shadowy Fellowship Foundation.
The problem is that it won’t work. Any design of the Internet must allow for anonymity. Universal identification is impossible. Even attribution — knowing who is responsible for particular Internet packets — is impossible. Attempting to build such a system is futile, and will only give criminals and hackers new ways to hide.
The site stopped publishing leaked documents in December in order to concentrate on a pledge drive, aimed at rising a minimum of $200,000 to keep the lights on, and $600,000 if staff were to be paid. Wikileaks also canvassed for technical support and legal help.
The other fallacy is the view at work here that there is no such thing as reputation, or even identity, absent trademark law. But this is incorrect. Of course people and firms can have reputations even if trademark law is nonexistent. All that is required is that people be able to identify other people and firms, and communicate. Pro-trademark arguments often implicitly assume that this is not possible, absent state-enforced trademark law, which is ridiculous.
I was at an Open Rights Group event in Edinburgh yesterday, about lobbying MPs regarding the DE Bill. One of the attendees, Hugh Hancock, pointed out that he will likely be harmed by the DE Bill, even though he is a creative person who is part of the digital economy, one of the very group of people this bill is ostensibly intended to help. (Of course, we all know that the DE is really there to protect the content distribution industry, not creative people).
Summary: Disturbing developments in Europe following heavy lobbying from Microsoft and its front groups
Judge Uwe Scharen is doing the unthinkable after heavy Microsoft lobbying for software patents in Europe. This is particularly important because Scharen “will also rule the EPO EBOA,” according to the FFII’s President (we wrote about the EBOA in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] as it affects all of Europe). He is “validating software patents in the recent BGH decision (read last page),” FFII’s President shows using the recent ruling[PDF].
Moreover, based on this report, the FFII’s President writes: “EPO is considering whether to redefine the criteria for patenting software inventions [...] German Supreme Court validates software patents, add a computer and software becomes patentable.”
The European Patent Office is considering whether to redefine the criteria for patenting software inventions.
“Talk Standards” is a Microsoft lobby, according to the FFII’s President. When asked why or how this is known he told us: “You have to compare their previous report with the previous MS report, they used the “same sentence”. Strange coincidence.”
Correction: The part “When asked why or how this is known he told us: “You have to compare their previous report with the previous MS report, they used the “same sentence”. Strange coincidence.”” was related to the patent WIPO report by ITSSD, a Microsoft proxy (in their previous submission to WIPO, they used the exact same sentence that Microsoft was using in its submission). █
“[The EPO] can’t distinguish between hardware and software so the patents get issued anyway.”
Summary: Patent news especially from the United States and with emphasis on software
• OpenSim developers warn against patents (FFII’s President: “Swpats are designed to stifle innovation and prevent competition by startups through increasing risk and costs for them”)
There’s some academic support for this position (though Microsoft itself has filed thousands of software patents since Gates wrote his memo). According to a study published last year in Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, a patent system such as one that we have now “generates significantly lower rates of innovation” than one where such parents are not allowed. According to the authors, current patent systems actually deter innovation instead of spurring it, contradicting the common belief that investors wouldn’t invent unless they were able to protect their work with patents.
While it is true that copyright and patent are constitutional, this does not make these laws just. What the artificial law-writing coup-leaders wrote a document designed to help the state seize more power is simply not relevant to the normative question of whether there should be IP.
Pro-patent law arguments rest on the assumption that the patent system generates overall wealth–that its benefits are greater than its costs–without ever making this case. Instead, they point to ways that the patent system benefits some people, and never bother to even try to tally up the costs to make sure it’s a net positive. In other words, they don’t even take their own justifications seriously.
It’s a good time to be in the patent litigation business, it seems, as “non-practicing entities” are regularly receiving higher damages in patent cases than companies that are actually selling products and services. That’s according to a new report on patent litigation from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which examined 1,400 patent cases in order to get a feel for the current landscape. Even though patent reform is a big talking point in government right now, it’s clear that the upper hand currently belongs to those who aren’t making products.
To be fair, Google has only been a defensive, rather than offensive, patenter, so I wouldn’t read too much into this. However, it does seem a little ridiculous to patent the process of displaying news with financial information. It’s a neat UI concept — but deserving of monopoly protection for decades?
Bill Gates, Ray Ozzie and a bunch of other heavy-hitters from Microsoft are named as inventors on a newly issued patent for a “personal data mining” system that would analyze information and make recommendations with the goal of aiding a person’s decisions and improving quality of life.
IMVironments – the little background themes for Yahoo Messenger – have gotten Yahoo in a lot of trouble. The company’s lost a patent infringement case that concerns them, and as a result, is supposed to pay a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corporation $12.4 million.
“If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.”
NOVELL is promoting Microsoft through GNU/Linux (and Microsoft on Apple devices [1, 2]). The obsession with Mono and Moonlight is about making Microsoft (not necessarily the same as Windows) stronger and this new article from Dr. Dobbs shows what Novell does for proprietary software, leading to unrest. More in IRC (starts here):
<oiaohm> So really why bother with moonlight?” For me, never, I was just passing on the post, as I thought it might be of interest here. The point I like to make is how useless moonlight is
Oiaohm> if Intel can get it, at some point someone well get the flash dump of it, and hack it. And it will end up in a repo in some part of the world they cannot sue.
but the fact that moonlight cannot, and most likely never will be able to legally play the MS DRM licencing in the Netflix Silverlight videos, means something. And it should be taken to the front of the debate.
But I do believe that M$ is trying to drive demand for Silverlight with Netflix and Blockbuster. Using both of these two, is creating another monopoly in the USA, as they are the biggest two in this market for most users here.
So, MS needs to come even more clean than just its community promise not to sue Linux. It needs to also open source its DRM, if users want to play Netflix Silverlight.
they are trying to put out a product (moonlight) that is defective by design. Because Miguel and MS already know that the quality Silverlight videos from Netflix contain MS DRM that Moonlight cannot legally play.
Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza is referenced with glee by the ‘Microsoft press’, which was promoting Silver Lie on Monday:
The response in the developer community to the Silverlight release has been almost universally positive. Miguel de Icaza, vice president of developer platforms at Novell and head of the open source Mono Project, called Silverlight 4 “a case of doing the right thing for users and developers” in a blog post soon after the release. “There are many other great features in Silverlight 4, but none as important as Silverlight becoming a universal runtime for the CLR. This is a revolution,” de Icaza wrote.
Summary: New heights for Microsoft’s spin and lies; the latest wave of GPL smears arrives from friends of Microsoft and former employees
A FEW days ago we mentioned Microsoft’s patent royalty coupons that it (re)sold to Novell customers. From the comments on that same article we have“The purpose of Microsoft’s engagement with Novell”:
The purpose of Microsoft’s engagement with Novell was to placate the European Union who were gunning after Microsoft for their – alleged – anti-competitive practices. The EU had reached the conclusion that Microsoft had largely (and illegally) wiped out most of (Europe’s) software industry and was actually in the business of now gouging its corporations and citizens for billions of dollars every year.
SUSE – being formerly a German owned Linux developer.. and the No 1 distribution in Europe – was specifically targeted by Microsoft in an attempt to mitigate the enormous pressure they were under to prove they had become more ‘inter-operable’. Thus the ‘inter-operability’ agreement with Novel/SUSE so as to prove itself a good corporate citizen and placate the EU about it intentions to ‘open up’…. and to provide forward supporting evidence seeking to protect Microsoft from further efforts by the EU to prosecute them for – alleged – monopolistic practices.
Watch what the ‘Microsoft press’ published a few days ago in order to deceive the masses with the help of people who masquerade as journalists or merely pass on whatever ludicrous claims Microsoft makes, uncritically. Their negligence is to blame for a lot of problems because they can prevent almost any problem by investigating and exposing. Microsoft booster Marius Oiaga promoted the same PR lies, as well. These people have no shame about lying and spinning. Some of them are paid handsomely by Microsoft in order to do this, namely promoting this delusion that Microsoft’s blatant patent attacks on GNU/Linux and Free Software are in some ways an act of playing nice.
The dishonesty is breathtaking and Novell helped initiate this, in the words of Oiaga:
Back in 2006, Microsoft made a landmark move designed to bridge Windows Server and Linux with an interoperability agreement inked with Novell, a partnership that has evolved and grown in complexity. Although criticized for its intellectual property assurance aspect, the Novell deal signaled a cultural change for Microsoft.
No, it didn’t! Microsoft began suing GNU/Linux companies after it had signed the deal with Novell.
The lies will obviously never end and those who have the money will manage to squeeze their story (lies) into the media. If only Brian Proffitt stopped sympathising with Novell, then the quest for truth would be nearer to being accomplished. There are another couple of comments on his promotion of a Novell job vacancy (Zonker left), one of which says:
I was already skeptical a few years ago but after reading many of the documents Groklaw has linked to in the Comes vs Microsoft case and read how Microsoft does business (I always thought the case against them was a bit on the heavy handed side but after reading those documents and emails, its seems they were just as bad as we thought if not much worse).
‘Show me’ is popular in my state and not because of spring break.So until I hear/read any repudiation of the past 2-3 years of attacks on Linux from THE HEADS at Microsoft, I have absolutely nothing to base this ‘things are different’ vibe you are peddling. And considering that the whole TomTom lawsuit by MS over three patents that relate to TomTom’s implementation of the Linux kernel wasnt even one year ago, it seems your idea of thaw is pretty strange.
As a “Non-Compensated Individual Hobbyist Developer”, Novell and their apologist Zonker were defending threats to my livelyhood.
To broaden this last statement and to use the same words, all of Novell and their apologists are defending threats to the livelihood of Free software. They are helping Microsoft.
Microsoft is more than just Microsoft. It is an aggregation of companies all of which serve similar and sometimes overlapping agendas.
Take Black Duck Software for example. It is yet another source of FUD against the GPL and it was created by a Microsoft executive [1, 2, 3, 4]. Watch what Black Duck Software announced a few days ago (in a paid press release even):
Black Duck Software Awarded Patent for Core Technology That Automatically Resolves Software License Obligations and Conflicts
Black Duck Software, the leading global provider of products and services for accelerating software development through the managed use of open source software, has been granted a patent protecting core technology that can automatically identify license obligations and resolve license conflicts for legally-protectable content (e.g. software, multimedia, video, audio, textual representations, works of art, visual representations, technological know-how, business know-how, contract rights, and/or software elements, etc.).
For those who do not know, Black Duck Software is a proprietary software company (monetising the existence of FOSS as raw data to work on) that even endorses and brags about software patents that it’s applying for and receiving right now. It promotes Microsoft’s moves against the GPL by announcing deceiving numbers, which lead companies like Alfresco to changing their minds about the GPL.
“There are new articles that discuss the attacks on the GPL, typically quoting Monty, who is now in Microsoft’s CodePlex Foundation (like Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza, who also removed GPL code in December).”We must make ourselves aware that anti-GPL folks are busy smearing the GPL at the moment, just like in prior years (but probably more so than before). There are new articles that discuss the attacks on the GPL, typically quoting Monty, who is now in Microsoft’s CodePlex Foundation (like Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza, who also removed GPL code in December). The apple does not fall far from the tree and one reader of ours says that “they have escalated their FUD carefully so that their target audience is acclimated to it in steps — first it was all just anti GPL 3.0, now a year later it is anti GPL entirely… this is how professional marketing campaigns are done. This is more organized than people want to believe.”
We previously showed how attacks on the GPL had been coordinates by Microsoft front groups like ACT. █
Summary: The BBC rewrites history to tell a truly deceiving story which does a disservice to the broadcaster
THE previous post (titled “Computer History Development Timeline“) was put there for a reason. It precedes yet another case of the MSBBC (occupied by many former Microsoft employees [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]) rewriting history in a most shameful way that made one of our readers very upset. He wrote a detailed analysis of this new programme.
It is worth pointing out that the BBC has been accused many times before of rewriting/distorting Microsoft history. The new programme about the Internet is a one-hour piece which shows another example of the BBC glorifying Bill Gates (we have other examples). This ought to make people skeptical about anything they read in the Beeb about Bill, who sometimes even writes for the Beeb. To give just a sample of external links:
A lot of people trust the BBC, so the broadcaster has great responsibility and it should not be allowed to temper with history. But that’s exactly what it’s doing right now.
Our reader and I had some conversations prior to the preparation of a detailed dissection of the BBC’s new programme. “Please watch the BBC video and note down who appears,” he said, “and in what order.
“Same with companies and logos. As far as I can see, there is no mention of Paul Allen or Steve Jobs. Or the Mozilla people or the TCP/IP people. See that I’m getting at? Where are the real pioneers? How can you make a program on the Internet without mentioning Apple or IBM or Novell or… remember all the other smaller desktop companies that were around before the IBM-PC?”
As far as I can tell, they never mentioned Netscape. Are they out of this world? I watched the programme two nights ago and our reader is right. But please, readers are encouraged to verify for themselves. It is there freely available on iPlayer, which relates to another Microsoft scandal that we wrote about in:
Our reader says: “This video is making me very angry as I listen and transcribe it. Get a load of this from 10:58, talking about libertarianism, the ‘free’ software movement and shots of hippies smoking joints. Must have been done deliberately.
“I can imagine the script instructions: Instead of an interview with real Internet pioneers, let’s type up some stuff about libertarianism and cross fade that with joint smoking hippie types. What a total disgrace.”
“No Google, no Cerf,” I pointed out to the reader. “I noticed that. Just hippies versus those evil “Web giants”…and a fake hypothesis.”
“Yeah,” says our reader, “the whole thing could have been typed up at Redmond. Take careful notice of the images that go with the text. Tokesmoking hippies and free anarchist web types, versus Bill Gated who invented “Internet Explorer” to save the Web for commerce.
“There never was any such dichotomy.”
It sometimes seems like this so-called ‘documentary’ was not about the Internet. It’s about those “evil anarchists” and their “crazy” agenda from which we are saved.
“You gotta get as many people as possible to comment on that propaganda piece,” said our readers and I personally agree because pissed me off too. It’s like an anti “Freetard” programme, thinly veiled as something else. It also established revisionism by selection and omission, with implicit emphasis and inane sound bites.
Here are some transcriptions and comments that our reader added to them:
Who pioneered the WEB
Well, according to the BBC, it was Tim Berners-Lee, (0:39) “the man who Invented the web” and Bill Gates. While the former did actually do something amazingly inventive, Bill Gates contribution is less clear. At (2:12) a giant Internet Explorer logo pops up, totally filling the screen. I would have thought a mention of Mozilla and NCSA would have been a more appropriate place to start.
(2:44) “In this series, I’ll be meeting all the pioneers, and key players. Everybody from Google to Facebook, Twitter to Amazon. The people who helped bring about this seemingly unstopable leveling of power, culture and values, that’s having such an impact on all our daily lives “
Of the above, only Google could be described as a pioneers.
(3:04) And cut to our second ‘web pioneer’, guess who, Bill Gates of Microsoft for an authoritative description of the impact of the Web. This from the man who missed the boat, at least three times, the Web, online commerce and Search technology.
“Well, the Web is how mankind communicates nowadays”
They then immediately cut to Steve Wozniak of Apple, a true pioneer of the desktop revolution and the Internet.
“It’s like the Internet is like a brain, it’s the smartest Brain in the world”
In case you don’t get it yet, in priority of who contributed the most, Berners-Lee followed by Bill Gates followed by Steve Wozniak.
(3:15) A flash of the Wikipedia site as Al Gore pops up, “it is an empowering tool that has more potential than any other human civilisation has ever developed”
OK, Al Gore, while not actually inventing the Internet, did actually help to vote in funding. Something the video could have mentioned here. The whole thing suffers from this, light and fluffy sound-bytes and lacking in dept.
(3:22) Next up Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook. Let’s give him his due, the concept of a social network is creative. But a pioneer of the Web, come on, you can not be serious here.
Yet some more words of wisdom from Bill Gates:
“The world is going to keep getting more and more open. There’s going to be more information available about… about everything”
Apart from Steve Wozniak and Tim Berners-Lee, no one else mentioned up to now has done any real pioneering. Unless I missed it?
(3:28) A big shot of the Google logo and cross fade to Stephen Fry
“This as astounding technology and we should just take a moment to celebrate the power and the reach that it gives us”
From section 31:32, a big mention of ‘piracy’, but absolutely *no* mention of Torvalds or the Open Source contribution. It’s as if history has been erased!!
(3:40) “This is the story of the Web.”
Problem is, no it isn’t.
[fast forward]
(10:58) Images of hippy drugged out types from the sixties. According to the video, the ‘Web’ was inspired by counter-culture, hippy idealistic, libertarianism and then goes on to link this to the “free software” movement. While managing to not once mention Open Source and the people making money from it. I don’t believe it!
(11:07) “The leveling ambitions of the online world can be traced back to the counter-culture of the nineteen sixties and the epicenter of this hippy idealism, San Francisco”
(11:18) a shot of a street sign “ASHBURY – 1500 – HAIGHT”. Wasn’t that where Charles Manson used hang out?
(11:25) Cut to an old Alan Wicker documentary: “No one knows what’s happening in San Francisco. But this is where it’s at, traditional home of the wayout. Today, Mecca of happy hippies who are cracking the smooth silhouette of American materialism with that ultimate weapon – with love.
(11:45) “Amidst the ferment a particular strand of a philosophy known as libertarianism began to take root. It was a mix of both left and right wing ideas and rejected state control, the legal system and censorship. While emphasising the importance of individual free will”
All the while the narrator is saying this, there are close-ups of hippy types smoking what appears to be joints. What a co-incidence, isn’t it?
(12:03) “And while the counter-cultural dream would fade away in the real world, in the nineteen seventies it found an unlikely place where these ideals would flourish. Previously had been the preserve of governments, the military and large corporations. But now for the first time, smaller cheaper models began to put the technology in the hands of the people. And something remarkable happened, this counter cultural libertarianism found a new home on what was the early Internet”
(12:42) Cut to Andrew Keen, author of “The Cult of the Amateur”. Not a fan of the new technology.
“The most concrete legacy of the counter-culture is the Internet. The values, the organisation, the rebellion, the resistance to authority were all encapsulated in the Internet”
[fast forward]
“In this world before the Web, if you went online, you were walled into small corners of cyberspace. To create the Web as we now know it would take someone to write a common language that would link the data stored on computers around the planet. A man who would invert the World Wide Web”
(23:46) “I invented the web just because I needed it, really. Because it was so frustrating and didn’t exist,” says Tim Berners-Lee
[fast forward]
(27:55) A quote from Bill Gates
“The dream that everybody wanted to be connected, you know that goes way-way back. It’s about letting people share information”
Curiously enough in his book “the road ahead”, the Internet is given scant mention. And according to the Wikipedia entry on Windows. Consumer versions of Windows were originally designed without a network connection and Windows NT and its successors were not initially designed with Internet security in mind.
(29:14) “The Web is more than just an empowering tool, it’s deliberately structured in a way that resists authority… The Web was designed to give all users equal access. You don’t need permission to visit web sites or create one. And when you are on the Web, there are no governments generating rules and regulations. There is no center and no controlling authority. It’s the ultimate leveling.
“What we had was the development of the Wide World Web was a technological solution built at CERN that meshed with the hippy dream. Little wonder then that the Web was set on a collision course with conventional notions of social order and hierarchy”
(30:06) “The revolutionary thing is that it let people be very free. It constrained them as little as possible. It allows you to publish what ever you like. It allows you to publish it in any format. But the really important thing was it could be done on a server without asking anybody else, without having to register…” [Lee]
(30:22) “For most of Western history you had an authority framework that was vertical. God on top and you on the bottom and Dad and the Pope and the King somewhere in that great white column. And suddenly authority as a technical matter and as a political matter was horizontal”
(30:45) “I mean when you listen to people like Berners-Lee and all the rest of the crowd. They idealise this notion, for the first time in human history, we’ve created something without a center, it can’t be controlled. Well the reason we created it was because these people were opposed to the notion of hierarchy and authority. So it wasn’t an accident, they created their idealogical wet dream” [Andrew Keen]
(31:12) “And there was one final thing that turned the Web into a kind of kryptonite threatening to subvert society and the twentieth century economic model. It was given away for free”
(31:32) “Tim Berners-Lee is someone who invented something of unbelievable power. But has turned his back on any kind of profiting from it. think we should celebrate not just his ingenuity but the World Wide Web worked because he opened it up, because it was free for all to use. It’s true Open Source in that sense and he should be daily thanked by everybody who gets any pleasure or profit out of the World Wide Web for that supreme act of generosity, selflessness and idealism” [Stephen Fry]
[fast forward]
(32:22) “But the very success of the Web would rouse a giant. The idea that it was a creative space where all could participate equally would quickly be confronted by a very different model that say the Web as a place to buy and sell rather than to share”
Notice the implication that only Microsoft spotted the commercial possibilities of the Web and notice also how the argument is presented as a division between Microsoft and the commercial Web versus drug toking libertarians.
[fast forward]
(33:00) “The year was 1975 Pink Floyd was on the radio, Jaws was at the Cinema and the Vietnam war had just finished. But it was also the year that a young Harvard dropout named Bill Gates arrived in Albuquerque New Mexico. Gates had come to New Mexico to work for a small company called MITS. And thirty years ago some of MITS biggest customers were amateur rocket enthusiasts… MITS soon moved on to more sophistic electronics creating the earliest affordable home computer the ALTAIR 8800. Helping to set in train the revolution that would lead to the wired world of today”
A better candidate for when it all began would be 1972 when Robert Kahn successfully demonstrated the ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. Electronic mail or e-mail was also introduced in that year.
(34:18) “The personal computer was the template on which the web had to be created. You had to have millions of these common machines in order for it to make any sense”
Except Berners-Lee of CERN created it on a NEXT machine and used it to connect physicists (IIRC). Why is there no mention of Apple in any of this?
(34:32) “Bill Gates was developing BASIC, a programming language for the ALTAIR. He saw the potential to make big money from software at a time when most personal computer users were hobbyists who gave it away for free”
Except most software was ‘free’ at the time, when you bought the hardware you got a copy of the source as well. And it’s ironic he would later complain about piracy as the Altair Basic was based on Decus BASIC the source of which Gates had obtained from a DEC users group.
(35:11) “When he found out that hobbyists from the homebrew club in California, were making pirated copies he was furious”
You won’t believe it, they then cut to Steve Wozniak, admitting that they pirated the ALTAIR software at his homebrew club.
(35:22) “Well we had a copy, one copy of the tape our club library had bought, purchased. And one member of the club took that tape and borrowed it for two weeks and when he came back he brought back like four copies and we got a letter from Bill Gates all upset, you know copyright, you’re copying software and you shouldn’t. Because basically you know, hey you have to pay for what you use” [Steve Wozniak]
I wonder if the WOZ realized he was in an anti-piracy commercial for Microsoft?
(35:43) “When we started Microsoft, some people were copying the BASIC tape. I said in a letter, hey we’ll write more software if more people pay us. Something should be free and something should be payed for”
This from Bill “show me the source” Gates ? How much royalties did Microsoft pay BASIC?
(35:57) “Twenty years later Bill Gates and Microsoft would return to stage this battle online. The software for the Wide World Web had been given away for free. Because Tim Berners-Lee like earlier pioneers believed the online world should be about an ideal of sharing. For Bill Gates and others like him it was simply the biggest business opportunity of the century”
A bit of a distortion, especially coming from a journalist with ten years’ experience. The software is licensed and sold. There are various provisors that restrict you from imposing onerous conditions on your customers. There are a number of licenses that allow you no not have to pass on your own source code.
(36:24) Another shot of the Internet Explorer logo… with MSN in the top right corner.
(36:39) Another logo, ‘Microsoft on the Web’
(36:40) Another shot of Internet Explorer, with a voice over mentioning business. No shots of any Redmonites smoking tokes
“Before the Web, the Internet was administrated by a public body and businesses was banned.This was only overturned in 1994. And these two opposing ideologies would slug it out and battle for the soul of the online world”
Erroneously giving the impression that Microsoft and “Internet Explorer” had something to do with opening the Internet up to the commercial sector… Microsoft saves the Internet from the hippies. And I thought the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) had something to do with commercialising the Internet. At least I remember working for some at the time.
(37:06) “The most significant conflict began in 1995, when Microsoft launched “Internet Explorer”, and set out to beat all competition. They effectively forced computer manufacturers to sell machines with it pre-installed. From nowhere Microsoft ended up with more then ninety percent of the market”
They did a lot more than that, you should take a look at the comes documents on Groklaw.
(37:51) “But the legal battle wasn’t just about Microsoft. It was about two completely different ideas of what the Web should be”
The following over a screenshot of Netscape, but viewed in the Internet Explorer
(38:00) “I think right from the beginning there are kinda two competing views about the Web playing out which still play out now. One is that the Web is this home for collaboration, for sharing for allowing information to be free. For people being able to create thing together on ‘open platforms’ and sharing ideas. And that’s embedded in the kind of hippy geek culture of homebrew computer club, right at the start of this in nineteen seventies (1970) And then there is another, which is the kind of Bill Gates/Microsoft corporate view, wait a minute, how do you pay the mortgage”
(38:32) And cut to a humongous START logo.
Still no mention of the Apple, IBM, or Compaq, who made a bundle out of the IBM PC. Remember if IBM had managed to prevent the clone market, there would be no Compaq or Microsoft!
While the below is spoken a big ‘START DISCOVERING’ appears on screen followed by (38:49) a big ‘MICROSOFT Where do you want to go today’ followed by a big ‘START LEARNING’ followed by the Windows XP desktop. All Microsoft copyrighted symbols. Talk about unsublimated advertising
(38:43) “A legal ruling meant Microsoft had its wings clipped. But the commercial ideology it represented was in the ascendant. And in this the era of the dot com boom it seemed the Web was ripe for business exploitation. But soon would shift once more”
(38:59) “As Internet Explorer popularised the Web, bringing millions online. People began to learn what the web could do for better or worse”
Excuse me, Internet Explorer didn’t populerise the Web. The Web popularized browsers. Namely Mozilla Netscape. Reason being that ‘Internet Explorer’ didn’t exist at the time. As neither did a Windows IP stack.
Twenty years on from the invention of the World Wide Web, Dr Aleks Krotoski looks at how it is reshaping almost every aspect of our lives. Joined by some of the web’s biggest names – including the founders of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, and the web’s inventor – she explores how far the web has lived up to its early promise.
In the first in this four-part series, Aleks charts the extraordinary rise of blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube
Where’s Paul Allen in all of this, is he even given a mention?
In summary, the BBC has spread truly inaccurate claims which make the ludicrous suggestion that the Web became centralised like the mainstream media, so all those “crazy anarchists” should just give up. It almost attributes some imaginary notion of “triumph of business on the Web” to Bill Gates, which is utterly ridiculous and made implicit more than explicit.
Speaking of lies and revisionism, we recently redid our page about the Gartner Group — a corruptible group which Mark Hinkle (Zenoss executive) made fun of a few days ago by linking to the following video (a spoof as shown below). I also participated in a television documentary (to be shown in French TV, Swiss TV, and maybe US TV) on the subject. Analyst groups are essentially liars for sale and it sure seems like the BBC is not much better. It’s just sad that there are few sources left to rely on. They rewrite history. █
Summary: A reader’s document on history (based on assorted sources)
Quick Timeline
1000: The abacus gained widespread acceptance in Europe. 1617: John Napier, discoverer of logarithms, invented a calculating device based on them called Napier’s Bones. 1622: William Oughtred invented the slide rule, based on Napier’s work with logarithms. The slide rule is an “analog” computer and served as the primary computing device for engineers until 1972. Oughtred’s was circular, but here’s a straight on by Robert Bissaker (1654). 1623: Wilhelm Schickard of Tuebingen, Wuerttemberg (now part of Germany), produced a 6-digit machine called the “Calculating Clock”. It can add and subtract and indicates overflow by ringing a bell (allowing 7-digit calculations by counting the overflow). The device was reconstructed in 1960 and found to work. 1644: Blaise Pascal created a 5-digit calculator, the “Pascaline”, but it cannot subtract and is more complex than Schickard’s machine. Pascal sold somewhere between 10 and 15 of these machines, some capable of 8 digits. 1668: Sir Samuel Morland of England created a non-decimal adding machine designed to do calculations in English currency. 1674: Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz of Leipzig designed the “Stepped Reckoner” which could handly operands of 5 and 12 digits with products of up to 16 digits. Unfortunately the carry mechanism sometimes didn’t work right. 1770: (or thereabouts) Mathieus Hahn, somewhere in Germany, produces a successful multiplying calculator. 1775: Charles, third Earl of Stanhope, in England, made a successful multiplying calculator similar to Leibniz’s. 1786: J. H. Mueller of the Hessian army creates a design for the type of machine later known as a “difference engine” (see 1842, Babbage and Ada) which calculates values of a polynomial. Mueller couldn’t get it funded so it wasn’t built. 1801: The Jaquard loom used an automatic punch card reader to “program” fabric patterns. 1820: The first commercially available calculator, the Arithmometer, was produced by Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar of France. The user dialed numbers with a set of wheels, then pulled a crank to do the calculation. It could add, subtract, multiply and divide. Machines of this design were sold for nearly 90 years. 1832-1871: Charles Babbage and Ada, Countess of Lovelace had a lot of fun not quite getting around to completing the Difference Engine, the first (mechanical) programmable computer. Others did complete such machines based on their work. 1854: George Boole invented Boolean Algebra, the binary logic used by all digital computers. 1884: John H. Patterson founded National Cash Register Comapny (NCR). NCR’s transaction recording devices soon became the scourge of sales clerks everywhere, forcing them to invent new methods for theft, fraud and embezzlement. ( NCR Timeline). 1885: William Burroughs patented an adding machine and founded the American Arithmometer Company, which was renamed Boroughs Adding Machine Company in 1898. Bouroughs entered the computer business in the 1950s. 1886: Dor E. Felt produces the “Comptometer” desk calculator. This calculator enters numbers by pressing keys rather than turning dials. 1889: Dor E. Felt adds a printer to his Comptometer desk calculator. 1890: To process information from the 1890 census, Herman Hollerith invented a system of punch cards (see 1801) sized to fit the currency handling equipment used in banks, thus setting the dimensions of the data processing punch card (the dollar was bigger then). This project evolved into the Tabulating Machine Company, which merged into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording company in 1911. 1903: Nutcase inventor Nikola Tesla patented electrical logic circuits called “gates” which implemented Boolean Algebra in physical form. Digital computers are built almost entirely from transistorized versions of these “logic gates”. Other Tesla inventions include the entire AC power distribution system, florescent lights, high voltage transformers, induction motors, wireless communications (radio), telephone repeaters and other minor items, most of which someone else took credit for. 1911 June: Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company was formed by Computing Scale Company of America, Tabulating Machine Company and International Time Recording Company. 1914: Thomas J. Watson took over Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and gave it a new mission: “Crush National Cash Register Co.” (NCR had fired Watson). 1924: Computing Tabulating Recording Company was renamed International Business Machines (IBM) by Thomas J. Watson. 1935: Konrad Zuse built the relay based Z1 electrical computer in his parents living room. It was followed by the Z2 in 1938. Zuse invented the world’s first programming language (Plankalkul) for the Z3 in 1946. He reconstructed the Z4 in Switzerland after the war. Because he was on the wrong side of the war his machines are not counted in the “official” history of computers (except in Germany). His computer company was absorbed by Siemens Corporation. 1935: The Manchester Differential Analyser, an analog computer, was completed to calculate differential equations. 1935: IBM produces the IBM 601 punch card based tabulator capable of doing 1 multiplication per second. 1500 of them were built. 1939: Hewlett-Packard Company founded by David Packard and William Hewlett, headquartered in Hewlett’s Palto Alto garage. 1939: John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry of Iowa State University began work on the Atanasoff-Berry computer. Atanasoff was judged by the U.S. Supreme Court to be the true inventor of the electronic computer (see also Konrad Zuse, 1935). 1940: George Stibitz of Bell Labs developed a digital calculator from metal strips (from a tobacco can), batteries and flashlight bulbs. This machine, called the Model I Complex Calculator, was in service for 9 years. 1941: John Mauchly and Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania began construction of an electronic digital computer. 1943: Colossus, an electronic digital computer, was built in England to break German codes. 1944: Mark I, the first general purpose digital computer (unless you count certain others) was built at Harvard under the direction of Howard Aiken. the Mark I was used by the Navy for ballistic calculations. 1945: Navy Lieutenant JG Grace Hopper (later Admiral Grace Hopper) finds a bug (moth) caught in relay contacts of the Mark II computer, causing a malfunction. This is not the origin of the term “bug” in technology. The term was mentioned by Thomas Edison in a way implying it had been long in use then. This may, however, be the first recorded case of a bug being caused by an actual bug. 1946: ENIAC, the first fully electronic digital computer used 18,000 vacuum tubes. J. Presper Eckert Jr and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania. 1947: The Transistor was invented by Walter Brattain and William Shockley. 1948: An Wang invents core memory. This randomly accessible memory (RAM) is composed of a mesh of wires with little magnetic donuts at the intersections. This type of memory is “non volatile” (it doesn’t go away when the power is off) and is, in 2001, making a comeback, but on a microscopic scale. 1948: John Mauchly and Prsper Eckert found the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Comapny and start work on UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer). 1948: The first computer with memory, the Ferranti Mark I, is deigned at Manchester University by Frederic Williams and Thomas Kilburn. 1948 Fall: IBM produces the “IBM 604″, a plugboard programmed calculator using vacuum tubes. 1949-1951: Jay W Foreester and an MIT team construct “Whirlwind” for the US Navy Research Office. Features are brought on line over a period of years. 1950: The Ace Pilot Model 1950 was built at the National Physics Laboratory of England, based on the work of Alan Turing, and was in operation for scientific calculations for x6 years. 1950: Western Electric developed growing large single crystals of silicon which could be sliced into wafers – the basic building material for integrated circuits. 1951: UNIVAC, the first commercial computer (unless it was Feranti’s) was shipped by Remington Rand. It used mercury delay lines for memory and reels of magnetic tape for storage. It’s first use was to tabulate the 1950 census results. 1951: Feranti Ltd. completes the first commercial computer (unless it was UNIVAC). It was based on the “Feranti Mark I” but was also known as the “Manchester Mark II”, “MUDC”, “MUEDC”, and “MADAM”. They sold 8 of these even though the leading expert, Douglas Hartree, had assured them 3 existing computers would handle all the calculations that would ever be needed in England. 1952: Grace Murray Hopper (U.S. Navy Retired) developed the first operational compiler. A compiler converts a human written program into machine code. 1952: IBM enters the computer business with the “701″ 1952: IBM introduces the first magnetic tape drive for on-line data storage, the 726. It used 8″ diameter reels of tape holding about 1 Megabyte, or the contents of about 12,500 punch cards. IBM was producing 16 Billion punch cards per year in 1952. 1953: IBM introduced the 701, its first electronic computer. 1957: Control Data formed to produce supercomputers. Seymour Cray was the designer. 1957: Digital Equipment Corp. founded by Keneth Olsen with $70,000. The leading producer “Minicomputers”, DEC became the second largest computer company in the 1970s. Ken Olsen made the famous statement “There will never be a use for a computer in the home”. Completely missing the PC revolution, DEC declined and was bought and disbanded by PC maker Compaq in 1998. 1957: Grace Hopper developed the Flowmatic computer language for the UNIVAC 1. Flowmatic was the foundation from which COBOL was developed (1959). 1957: John Backus at IBM developed the Fortran compiler for the IBM 704. 1958: The integrated circuit is invented by Jack St. Clair Kilby of Texas Instruments, beating Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor who independently invented one in 1959. Noyce went on to cofound Intel. 1959: Grace Hopper and her Codasyl co-workers issue the first COBOL compiler, a programming language for business use. 1960: IBM shiped the 1401, its first transistor based computer. 1963: Douglas Engelbart patents the mouse. 1964 : BASIC computer programing language was developed by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz (no, Bill Gates didn’t invent BASIC, sorry). 1964: TTL integrated circuits were introduced by TRW. 1964: IBM started shipping the 360 line of mainframe computers. 1965: Digital Equipment produced the first PDP-8 minicomputer, the first production computer to use integrated circuits. 1965: Work begun at Honeywell on Multics, the operating system Unix was derived from. 1966: ARPAnet was proposed (the first stirrings of the Internet). 1967: IBM built the first floppy disk drives (8″ SSSD, 256K). 1968: HAL 9000, the computer in the movie “2001: A Space Odessy” uttered the famous words “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” 1969: ARPAnet was launched (the birth of the Internet, and the IP network protocol). 1969: The first version of Unix was written by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie to run at Bell Labs on a Digitial Equipment PDP-11. 1971: Intel introduced the first microprocessor chip, the 4004, bringing to the world 4-bit power! 1972: Hewlett Packard released the HP-35 electronic calculator. The sliderule was rendered obsolete overnight, and “Reverse Polish Notation” became the standard for engineering calculators. 1973: Xerox demonstrated the Xerox Alto, the first computer to use a graphical display and mouse pointer. 1973: Ethernet was developed by Bob Metcalfe, Butler Lampson, David Boggs and Chuck Thacker. 1974: The TCP part of the TCP/IP protocol stack was proposed by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn to bring reliable transmission to the Internet. 1974: Gary Kildall developed CP/M , the first standard operating system for microcomputers . CP/M was the operating system Bill Gates bought a rip-off of to create MS-DOS in 1981. 1974: The C programming language was developed by Brian Kerrighan and Dennis Ritchie. 1974 December: The MITS Altair launched the PC revolution. 1975: Bill Gates and Paul Allen "borrowed" computer time to produce a rip-off of the BASIC computer language (see 1964) for the MITS Altair. The product was announced and advertisements placed before work began to keep others from entering the market. It was expensive, released late, incomplete and riddled with bugs. When copies were passed around by users trying to come up with bug fixes (and who were reluctant to spend a lot of money for something that didn’t work), Bill Gates accused them all of “Software Piracy”. Thus we find the tone of Microsoft’s ethics, business practices, product quality, and attitude toward users (they’re all thieves) already fully formed in the first weeks of the company’s existence. 1975: The world’s first retail computer store, Arrow Head Computer Company, opened in Los Angeles. 1976 April: Steve Wosniac and Steve Jobs finished the Apple I computer and formed the Apple Computer Company. 1977: IBM developed the first relational database program. 1977: Apple launched the Apple II computer. 1977: Commodore exhibited the PET computer. 1977: Radio Shack shipped the first TRS-80 Model I, launching a line of computers known (affectionately or otherwise) as the “Trash 80″. 1978: Digital Equipment put pressure on the mainframe with the VAX 11/780 minicomputer running the VMS operating system. 1978: Dennis Hayes started shipping the first “Hayes compatible” modem. 300-baud. Alas, poor Dennis, he continued to sell “brand name” into what had become a comodity market, and went belly up in 1998. 1979: The WordStar word processor and VisiCalc spreadsheet were released, launching the desktop PC into the business world. 1980: Seagate ships the first Winchester (sealed) 5″ hard disk – 5-Meg, $600. 1980: Xerox’s Smalltalk-80 programming language ushered in the concepts of Object Oriented Programming in a graphic environment. 1980: Novell founded. 1981: Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to IBM. Microsoft purchased QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from Tim Patterson of Seattle Computers and repackaged it as MS-DOS. IBM had to do a lot of the finish work because Microsoft lacked operating system skills. [The stories say Bill Gates’ mother helped this deal because she knew someone at IBM] 1981: Adam Osborne ships the Osborne 1 portable (“sewing machine”, 24-pounds) computer running CP/M. 1981: Bill Gates saw a demonstration of Visi On, a windowing environment by Visi Corp, and it scared him silly. Microsoft immediately began work on “Interface Manager”, later renamed “Windows”. 1981 August: IBM shipped the IBM PC based on the Intel 8088 8-bit microprocessor chip, which IBM was pleased to advertise as a 16-bit chip. Intel’s president remarked that the first he knew the 8088 was a 16-bit chip was when he read an IBM ad in an airline magazine. 1981 November: Ashton-Tate repackaged Wayne Ratliff’s Vulcan database program as dBase II, bringing relational database technology to the PC. There was never a dBase I, nor an Ashton, nor a Tate, (though a parrot was later named Ashton) bringing deceptive product naming to the PC. Ed Esber brought real MBA style business management to the company, destroying it completely. The parrot died and Ashton-Tate was sold to Borland, where dBase died. 1982 February: Intel released the 286 CPU chip at 6-MHz 1982: The KayPro II portable computer (“sewing machine”, 24-pounds) running CP/M was released by Non-Linear Systems. 1982: Digital Research sued Microsoft and IBM over copyright infringement. Gary Kildall sat down at a fresh IBM PC, typed a few keystrokes and popped up a Digital Research copyright notice. This impressed the Judge. DR won the case, monetary damages, and the right to clone MS-DOS. Microsoft won a gag oder to make sure the public never heard about this case. 1982: The first clones of the IBM PC appeared. Because they copied the BIOS program, IBM hauled them into court and destroyed most of them. 1983: OK, I’m still looking for the details on this. Some big exec (was it Esber?) said “Ashton-Tate has the database, MicroPro (WordStar) has the Word Processor, Visi Corp has the spreadsheet. There is no room for any new software companies.” 1983: Compaq brought out the first portable IBM PC compatible (“sewing machine” 30 pounds). In design, it “flattered” the CP/M based Osborne and Kaypro portables. IBM, certain that portable PCs had no market, licensed their PC ROM BIOS code to Compaq, making Compaqs the only truly “100% IBM PC Compatible” PC clones. Many early programs were written in “IBM ROM BASIC”, available only on Compaqs and real IBMs. 1983: Phoenix Technologies did a “clean room” reverse engineering job on the IBM PC BIOS (except ROM BASIC), enabling the “PC Clone” industry. Many companies churned out PC compatibles that were a lot faster, a lot cheaper and just as reliable as the IBM PC. Thus was created the unfortunate myth that “only price matters” in selecting computers. 1983 February: The Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program was released for the IBM PC, making it essential for every business to have PCs. 1983 March: IBM brings out the IBM PC XT. Basicly it’s the PC with a 10-Meg hard disk. 1983 April: Microsoft demonstrated “Interface Manager”, later renamed “Windows”. The demo was largely faked to make the computer appear to run programs simultaneously. 1983 November: Borland released Turbo Pascal, a low cost programming language that revolutionized the programming tools industry. 1983 November: Microsoft officially announced Windows. It didn’t actually work yet, and wouldn’t for a couple of years. 1983: Novell introduces NetWare X and NetWare S 1984 January: Apple introduced the Macinotosh computer with their famous “1984″ Super Bowl commercial. The Macintosh replaced their failed Lisa computer, bringing the graphic environment to the consumer desktop. 1984 April: Automation Access founded. 1984: The GNU Project began with the objective of producing a free, Open Source version of Unix, including all its tools and subsidiary programs. 1984: Hewlett Packard brought out their first LaserJet Laser Printer. 180 dots-inch, based on a Canon printer engine. To get the engine business, Canon signed an agreement they would never produce an HP compatible printer – big mistake. 1985: IBM tried to fight off Ethernet by bringing out their Token Ring network. Technically superior to Ethernet, in practice it was just more expensive. Just about extinct by 1999. 1985: Aldus delivered PageMaker page layout software to the Apple Macintosh, and the Macintosh to business desktops (at least in the marketing department). 1985 October: Intel released the 386 CPU chip at 16-MHz. 1985 November: Microsoft actually shipped Windows 1.0 (two years after announcing it in typical Microsoft fashion). It still didn’t work well enough to be useful for anything. 1985: Novell introduces Advanced NetWare 2.0. 1986: MCI and CompuServe bridged their proprietary e-mail systems, accelerating the use of e-mail in business. 1987: Copy protection died as Lotus removed it from 1-2-3. Microsoft had already removed copy protection from their products despite Bill Gates earlier statements that Microsoft would never ship non-copy protected products. Gates’ explanation: “The users won, what can I say? The users won.” Copy protection did not return in a serious way until 1998. It now appears it will need a stake driven through its heart to settle it back down. 1987: Digital Research exercised its right to clone MS-DOS (see 1982) and released DR-DOS. Microsoft launched an all out “dirty tricks” war against what they knew to be a superior product (clearly stated in internal e-mails). MS-DOS 5.0, 6.0 and 6.22 were essentially just imitations of the DR packages, though some features (task switching) never worked in the Microsoft versions, and they got sued for others (Stac). Caldera, current publisher of DR-DOS, is suing Microsoft over everything else, and looks good to win big-time. 1987 Apr: IBM and Microsoft introduce OS/2. 1987 Apr: Microsoft introduces OS/2 Lan Manager, an network operating system to compete with Novell’s NetWare. It’s a patched up rehash of IBM’s old PCNet. 1987: Apple introduces their own networking protocol, AppleShare. It supports two protocols, AppleTalk (210-kilobits/sec) and EtherTalk (10-Megabits/second). The EtherTalk card costs over $900, so most opt for AppleTalk at about $330 per card. 1987: IBM made VGA the video graphics standard for PC compatibles, sweeping all other products from the market. Unfortunately, it was inadequate, so “SuperVGA” and other non-standards were soon launched by the industry. 1987: Novell’s NetWare v2.11 brought networks to small business offices in a big way. One of the main objectives – to share Hewlett Packard’s expensive laser printers. 1987: IBM tried to regain control of the PC market, introducing the PS/2 family of computers with MCA (Microchannel Architecture). They wanted too much for the license. Even more important, they wanted back license fees for all the AT bus
computers a company had built before they’d license Microchanel. The industry responded with the EISA bus in 1988. Neither was widely accepted, and both were wiped from the PC market by PCI some years later. 1987 November: Microsoft releases Windows 2.0 and support for the Intel 80286 CPU chip. Still not good enough to use for anything. 1987 November: Microsoft releases Windows/386 which lets users run more than one DOS program at the same time. Still not good for much. 1988: Robert Morris Jr. launched the infamous “Internet Worm”, ushering in the age of widespread worms, viruses and trojan horses. 1988: Novell introduces Advanced NetWare 2.15. 1988 Oct: 3Com introduces the 3+Open network, based on Microsoft’s Lan Manager (based on IBM’s old PCNet). In 1990 a famous “shoot out” was held between 3+ and Novell NetWare. 3Com dropped out of the network software business in Dec 1990. 1988 Apr: ISDN service is introduced. 1989 Apr: Intel released the 486 CPU chip at 25-MHz 1989: Novell introduces NetWare 3.0. 1990: Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web service on the Internet. 1990 May: Windows 3.0, an almost but not quite usable version of Microsoft Windows was released. 1990 Sep: The famous breakup – Microsoft and IBM part ways and both have rights to OS/2. IBM tells Microsoft it’ll sue their ass if they use the name OS/2, so Microsoft’s version was renamed Windows NT. 1991: Novell introduces NetWare 3.11. 1991 Feb: AOL releases client software for IBM PC compatibles. 1991 Oct: Microsoft adds CD-ROM support and multimedia extensions to Windows 3.0. 1991 Oct: Linus Torvalds releases the first publicly available version of the Linux operating system, beating GNU’s Hurd to market (see 1984). 1992: The number of hosts on the Internet exceeded 1 million. 1992 April: Microsoft released Windows 3.1, with enough bugs fixed to be actually usable, firming up the tradition that no Microsoft product works before version 3.1, which is why Microsoft called the very first version of Windows NT version 3.1 “to avoid confusion”. 1992 November: The Geos desktop with GeoWorks suite was released. The press heralded it as “What Windows 3.1 should have been”. Users and reviewers liked it, but no software developers dared write software for it for fear of certain revenge from Microsoft. Geos disappeared from the market. 1992: Novell purchases Unix from AT&T 1993 March: Intel released the Pentium CPU chip at 66-MHz and started a massive advertising campaign to wipe out the 486 chip (because AMD made cheaper 486s that were about as fast as Intel’s Pentiums. The Pentium was not called the 586 because a judge told Intel they couldn’t copyright a number. 1993: The Mosaic Web browser was launched by NCSA, awakening business interest in the Internet. Graphics could now be viewed as easily as text. 1993: Novell introduces NetWare 3.12 and NetWare 4.0. 4.0 introduces Novell Directory Services in place of the Bindery. 1993 Nov: Microsoft introduces Windows NT 1.0 and a compatible version of OS/2 Lan Manager 1.0. Calls NT 1.0 NT 3.1 “to avoid confusion”. 1993: Commercial Linux distributions start to appear. 1994 February: Microsoft released Windows for Workgroups 3.11, adding networking to the product. The network, derived from IBM’s primitive PCNet, is so totally piss poor people continue to buy Lantastic instead. 1994 Mar: Bill Gates and Craig McCaw anounce a huge low orbit satilite communications system called Teledesic. 1994 Apr: Yahoo Web search service founded. 1994 Jun: ATM (Asychronous Transfer Mode) data service introduced by Bell Atlantic. 1994 Jun: U.S. government cancels requirement for GOSIP (Government Open Systems Interconnect, relegating the ISO 7 layer protocol stack to textbook status. TCP/IP “the interrum protocol that stayed for dinner” won simply because it worked. 1994 Aug: AOL reaches 1 million subscribers. 1994 Sep: Microsoft releases Windows NT 3.5, a speed-up and bug fix version of NT 3.1. 1994 Sep: The Netscape Navigator Web browser is launched by Mosaic Communications, which changed its name to Netscape two months later. 1994 October: IBM released OS/2 version 3.0, an operating system far superior to anything Microsoft had, or would have for years. IBM launched a major campaign to get software developed for it. Many major software houses signed up to port their applications, but nearly all had to drop OS/2 development when they read the NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) for the Windows95 development kit. If you were developing anything for OS/2, you could not participate in the Windows95 program. The
NDA itself required total secrecy, so the reason everyone dropped OS/2 development was only rumored for years. 1994: Novell purchases WordPerfect and Quatro Pro. 1995 March: Microsoft releases “Microsoft Bob”, featuring their new “social interface”. Bill Gates’ new wife Melinda got to announce this utter turkey. “Bob technology” finally found its way into Microsoft Office as the paper clip “assistant” . 1995 June: Microsoft released Windows NT 3.51. More bug fixes. 1995 Jul: IBM bought Lotus. 1995 Jul: Amazon.com Web based bookstore was founded. 1995 August: Microsoft released “32-bit” Windows95 , amid incredible hype. People who didn’t even own computers lined up to buy it. Microsoft announced Windows95 meant “the end of DOS”. See subsequent years for later “end of DOS, this time we really mean it” announcements. Also see 1995 November Intel release of the Pentium Pro, which gave the lie to Microsoft’s “32-bit” claims. Win95 “integrated” DOS with the Windows interface to eliminate DR-DOS from the market once and for all. 1995 August: Microsoft and Department of Justice finalize Concent Decree. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson is ordered to sign it, since Judge Stanley Sporkin refused, indicating it was too easy on Microsoft. Microsoft immediately starts publicly ridiculing the Department of Justice, changes the names of the practices forbidden by the Concent Decree, and continues business as usual. 1995 Sep: eBay Web based auction site was launched. 1995 Nov: Intel released the Pentium Pro chip. Microsoft was livid because Pentium Pro was optimized for 32-bit code. Windows95 runs like a dog on PPro, exposing Microsoft’s “32-bit” claims to be lies. OS/2 and Unix run just fine. 1995: Novell sells Unix to SCO. 1995: Gigabit Ethernet introduced by 3Com, Sun and Compaq. 1996 Feb: AOL reaches 5 million subscribers. 1996 Feb: Congress passes the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which is supposed to foster competition within local and long distance communications markets. It doesn’t work. 1996 Aug: Microsoft released Windows NT 4.0. 1996 Aug: Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0 and Netscape released Netscape Navigator 3.0, and the browser war becomes intense. 1996: Bill Gates “discovers” the Internet. It can’t be long now before we start hearing that Bill Gates “invented” the Internet (ooops, that was Al Gore, wasn’t it?). 1996: Novell sells WordPrefect and Quatro Pro to Corel, but keeps rights to GroupWise colaboration and messaging software. Issues Groupwise 5. 1997 Oct: The Department of Justice filed anti-trust charges against Microsoft. 1997 Nov: AOL reaches 10 million subscribers. 1997 December: Editors of PC Week, (published by Ziff Davis, long known as a Microsoft ally) announce that “Microsoft has peaked”. 1998 January: Intel released the Pentium II at 333-MHz, delivering on their promise to Microsoft to ship a Pentium Pro that ran 16-bit Windows95 code more efficiently. 1998 Feb: Compaq bought once mighty Digital Equipment, ending the age of the minicomputer. The mainframe is still standing. 1998 May: Napster music “sharing” software is introduced by Shawn Fanning at Northeastern University. 1998 June: Microsoft releases Windows 98. While it contained bug fixes for Windows95 the real reason for its release was to bury Internet Explorer in Windows so the Justice Department couldn’t make them take it out. 1998 October: Novell introduces NetWare 5.0. NetWare gets great reviews, and Microsoft feels the heat, especially from comparisons between NetWare 5.0 (shipping, works great) and Windows NT 5.0 (very, very late; very, very buggy, not shipping yet), so renames Windows NT 5.0 to Windows 2000 to stop the 5.0 vs 5.0 comparisons. 1998 Nov: AOL purchases Netscape for $4.2 billion. Netscape has been crushed by Microsoft’s monopolist business practices, but Microsoft spin doctors say it proves the vitality of the market. 1999: Bob Metcalf (see 1973) has to (in public) eat one of his InfoWorld columns because the Internet did not collapse in 1998. He ground it up in a blender with a lot of other ingredients, the wimp! Note: The author has the right to call Bob a wimp – as proof of concept he ate an entire Metcalf column, dry, whole and uncut (but did chase it with some Cabernet). 1999 Apr: the Melissa virus is released bring down Windows based networks worldwide. 1999 May: Microsoft releases Windows 98 SE (Second Edition) 1999 November: Guilty! Judge Jackson’s Finding Of Fact in Justice Department suit was released declaring Microsoft has a monopoly, and has knowingly abused its monopoly position. 1999 November: Comdex. All the excitement was in “Internet appliances” and Linux. It was clear that the PC, particularly the Windows PC, is in decline. 1999 Dec: AOL reaches 20 million subscribers. 2000 Jan: Novell introduces NetWare 5.1. Windows NT 5.0 still not shipping. 2000 February: Microsoft finally ships Windows 2000 (the operating system formerly known as Windows NT 5.0). 2000 February: Microsoft can’t take the heat – buys off Caldera evil business practices lawsuit. Microsoft demands a gag order as always to keep the truth from getting out. Microsoft announces a charge of $150 million and implies that was the total price (so Caldera position must have been weak). Experts estimate the actual buy-out was between $350 million and $500 million based on $150 million added to pre-existing reserves. 2000 February: the first big DoD (Distributed Denial of Service) attack brings down Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, CNN.com and E*Trade. 2000 April: Guilty! Judge Jackson’s Finding of Law is released immediately after DOJ / Microsoft settlement negotiations break down. Microsoft guilty on nearly all counts, “not proven” on a couple, and innocent on none. 2000 August: Caldera announces upcoming purchase of UnixWare, Unix trademark, rights to market SCO Unix, and SCO tradename from SCO. SCO becomes Tarantella Inc. 2000 August: Microsoft sends Windows 2000 Datacenter to production. OEMs should be taking delivery in September. 2000 September: Microsoft releases Windows Me (Melenium Edition). This was basically Windows 98SE with some maintenance features and multimedia features “integrated” the same as they did with Internet Explorer with the intent of destroying Real Media and other multimedia vendors. 2000 October 30: The last Multics system is shut down (see 1965). 2000 November: George W. Bush is elected president of the U.S. under suspicious circumstances. The business world presumes this means Microsoft will be let off on anti-trust charges. 2001 January: Linux kernel version 2.4 released with new features aimed at enterprise level servers. 2001 February: Microsoft announces Windows XP (eXPerience) formerly known as Whistler. It is the Windows 2000 code base applied to a consumer operating system. Shipment later in the year. 2001 June: A pro-business, Libertarian leaning Court of Appeals unanimously upholds all 8 counts of Microsoft’s conviction for abusing its monopoly. They set aside the penalty for retrial due to an “appearance” of of bias on the part of judge Thomas Jackson. 2001 Aug: Microsoft appeals to the Supreme Court to overturn it’s conviction for monopoly abuse.
Origins of Microsoft – How it all Began
How did Microsoft and its executives get so rich so fast? It wasn’t through “innovation” (even Microsoft execs can’t come up with a genuine Microsoft innovation). It wasn’t by giving credit where credit was due. It wasn’t by giving others the best deal, or giving them the best product.
A few hundred million a year well spent on PR has most of the world believing it was exactly these things that made them rich. In reality, it was an intense, single minded determination to make the most possible money by marketing and popularizing innovations, without regard, or compensation, to those who originated or who owned these innovations. In the process, they made an incredible number of enemies – so many enemies the hundreds of millions for PR is stretched a bit thin lately.
Microsoft and the Stock Market – The Dutch Tulip Craze, 1998
Microsoft’s Public Image – Billions Well Spent
Microsoft and the Truth – “Have we been introduced?”
Microsoft and the Law – Trouble, Trouble, Trouble
2003-Dec – Mythica sues over game title – Mythic vs MS Mythica
2003-Dec – Real Network sues Microsoft – major antitrust filing
2003-Oct – E-Data sues over music download patents – inconsequential?
2003-Oct – Isreal suspends all Microsoft contracts – antitrus action
2003 – Class action suit over security – California
2002-Oct – SPX sues Microsoft over patent – NetMeeting whiteboard
2002 – Burst sues over Patents and Antitrust – multimedia
2002 – Network Commerce sues over Patent – gets court date
2002 – Sun files private antitrust suit – over Java, again
2002 – Be files private antitrust suit – considered a strong case
2002 – AOL / Netscape files private antitrust suit – long expected
2001 – antitrust charges in South Korea – bid to stop Windows XP
2001 – Kodak considers antitrust suit – Microsoft hijacks photo software
2001 – Intertrust Sues – Microsoft steals music delivery encryption
2001 – FTC sues Microsoft (again) – False & Misleading Advertising
2001 – DOJ opens new Microsoft case – Bush admin picks up the ball.
2000-Nov – WebTV settles with FTC – False & misleading advertising.
2000-Oct – Racial discrimination suit filed – policy favores white & male.
2000-Sep – Fired Employee sues – wins, could get $9 million
2000-Jun – Hyperphrase sues Over Patent – Smart Tags in MS Office
2000-Mar – Europe Launches Second Anti-trust Investigation
2000-Jan – Over 100 Class Action Suites – The Sharks Smell Blood
1999-Feb-03 – Eoalis Sues over Patent – $520 million judgement in 2003
1998 – Blue Mountain Arts Sues Microsoft – Unfair Trade Practices
1998 – Mouse Designer Sues Microsoft – Patents & Trade Secrets
1998 – Court Denies Microsoft Access to Professor’s Research
1998 – Ed Curry vs. Microsoft – Security Expert Case
1998 – Department of Justice Sues Microsoft – Anti-Trust
1998 – 20 States Sue Microsoft – Anti-Trust
1998-2001 – Sun Microsystems Sues Microsoft – Java License
1998 – Caldera Sues Microsoft – Business Practices
1998 – AT&T Sues Microsoft – Microsoft Buys Out
1998 – Bristol Technologies Sues Microsoft – Breach of Contract
1998 – Borland Sues Microsoft – Microsoft Buys Out
1998 – SCO Sues Microsoft – SCO Wins
1998-2000 – Temp Workers Sue Microsoft – Temps Win
1998 – Microsoft Investigated by Japan – Files Seized
1998 – Microsoft Investigated by European Union – Anti-Trust
1998 – Department of Justice Investigates Collusion Attempt
1998 – Department of Justice Investigates Microsoft – Ongoing
1998 – 3Com Sues Microsoft – Business Practices
1998 – Ralph Nader Investigates Microsoft – Business Practices
1998 – Congress Investigates Microsoft – Business Practices
1998 – Spyglass Sues Microsoft – Microsoft Buys Out
1998 – Italy sues Microsoft – yet another Anti-Trust action
1998 – Microsoft Faces Charges in Brazil
1997 – The “Cookie Jar Reserve” case – Former audit chief sues
1995 – Syn’s Relief sues Microsoft for Software Piracy – Wins in 2001.
1995 – DoJ sues Microsoft over Intuit buyout
1994 – Stac Sues Microsoft – Stac Wins
1982 – Digital Research Sues Microsoft – DR Wins
Origins of Microsoft
The story of Microsoft is not one of rags to riches. Bill Gates was the son of a very wealthy Seattle attorney, which is why he had the money to found Microsoft, how he got involved with IBM, and why he was able to leverage a little luck into an empire. “To get rich, start rich” – advice to the ambitious.
“Software was seldom sold – since all software was based on the ideas and software of others, it was considered impossible to own it.”When the “personal computer” was born, the world of software was much different from today. On larger computers, software was simply included. What wasn’t included was developed by the owner. Software was seldom sold – since all software was based on the ideas and software of others, it was considered impossible to own it. Software was developed by those who could, passed around and shared.
Enter Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Microsoft’s first product was a BASIC programming language interpreter for the 8080 based Altair computer. The way this product was developed set the tone for the Microsoft of today.
Someone else’s intellectual property was used without compensation (Dartmouth BASIC, donated to the public domain).
Development was done by “borrowing” time on an expensive timeshare system – time that was being paid for by someone else.
The product was announced and advertised before real work was even begun (to discourage competition).
The product missed promised delivery after promised delivery and delivered versions were riddled with bugs.
This product, based on the ideas of others and developed on equipment not owned by Gates or Allen, was declared Microsoft’s property to be sold at the highest price the traffic would bear.
At least as much effort was put into promoting the product and disparaging other people’s products as was put into development.
When people passed around his product (largely appropriated by him from the public domain), Bill Gates screamed “Piracy!”. This use of the term “Software Piracy” may be Gates’ only true innovation.
When IBM was designing the IBM PC, they needed two things: an operating system to run it, and a programming language so people could get it to do something. The logical thing for IBM to do was use CP/M as the operating system, since it was the business standard at the time. CP/M was written by Gary Kildall and published by Digital Research Corp.
Bill Gates’ mother, a wealthy society matron who, as director of a prominent charity, associated with high IBM executives, urged these executives to talk to her son about his BASIC language interpreter. Since IBM was going to the West Coast to talk to Digital Research about CP/M, they agreed to talk to Bill.
Negotiations at Digital Research were handled by Gary Kildall’s wife (who was the appropriate officer to handle negotiations) and did not go smoothly. IBM’s people were upset at having to negotiate with a woman (this was the “Old IBM”, remember). DR’s lawyers declared the contract so one-sided it could not be signed without significant changes. DR, as the dominant operating system provider for small computers, had plenty at risk.
Alternate story - (there is some supporting evidence). While CP/M-86 was the logical choice for the IBM PC, it was considered unacceptable because Gary Kildall had had an affair with an IBM executive’s wife, making IBM very anxious to find an alternative.
Popular story – (no supporting evidence). Gary Kildall was out flying his airplane and didn’t bother showing up for the meeting with IBM. This seems to have been made up by IBM or Microsoft to cover up the real story.
While they were talking to Bill Gates about BASIC, IBM asked if he could also provide an operating system. Bill Gates answered “yes” and signed the contract. He had no product, no market and nothing at risk, so what the hell. Renegotiate later.
Microsoft purchased QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), a ripoff of CP/M (proven in court) from Seattle Computers for next to nothing and set out to finish it up. Unfortunately, Microsoft didn’t have the skills required for operating systems, so IBM had to do much of the finish work just to get the PC out the door.
“Unfortunately, Microsoft didn’t have the skills required for operating systems, so IBM had to do much of the finish work just to get the PC out the door.”Having almost no investment in DOS (Digital Research, Seattle Computers and IBM had done nearly all the work), no production costs (IBM did the production) and competing with companies that had a lot invested in their product, Bill Gates decided to sell at a price lower than others could reasonably match to drive competitors out of the business.
From this point on, Microsoft had a monopoly, which Bill Gates has worked tirelessly to deepen, extend and leverage.
When IBM created the PC AT, they also created a new operating system for it, much more advanced than DOS. Bill Gates threatened IBM that he would withdraw all licensing for DOS if the AT came out with any operating system other than DOS. Since the PC XT was nearly all of IBM’s PC business, and it was entirely dependent on DOS, IBM backed down. For the first time, but not the last, Microsoft used its monopoly position to deprive the public of a superior product.
Note: refer to well researched book “Big Blues” for background on the above.
Microsoft and the Stock Market
Microsoft has almost no assets, a few buildings and some obsolete computer code called “Windows”, code for a few Windows dependent applications, and a bunch of software patents related to Windows. Its market valuation (stock price per share multiplied by number of shares) is higher than IBM or General Electric. Both these companies have assets up the kazoo. Can you say “bubble”? I knew you could. A lot more on the Microsoft stock market problem is provided by analyst Bill Parish
[ UPDATE: 09-01-00 - Microsoft stock is still below 50% of its peak at 57. Even the sendoff of Windows XP to manufacturing didn't get a rise out of it. ]
[ UPDATE: 10-10-00 - Microsoft stock is now below 50% of its peak, and is continuing down ]
The market valuation of Microsoft is based on expectations of growth and profitability continuing to exceed expectations, and on the “greater fool” principle (no matter how foolish you were to pay that much, a greater fool will pay you more). These expectations are entirely unrealistic, but Microsoft is determined to keep them going as long as possible – especially since the wealth of Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Balmer and many other Microsofties is based on this same unrealistic valuation.
[ UPDATE: 10-10-00 - Paul Allen has sold out of Microsoft almost completely to preserve his wealth, and has resigned from the Board of Directors, as is appropriate for a person with little stock in the company. Bill Gates has also been selling out as fast as he has been able, considering his prominence in the company. ]
The imperative for high growth and high profit to support the valuation bubble has Microsoft attempting to leverage their monopoly into other areas. Having a monopoly is not against the law, but leveraging one to take over other markets is, and that’s why Microsoft is in trouble with the Department of Justice.
“Microsoft is debt free and awash in cash”. In a conventional sense, yes. Microsoft has not borrowed to grow its business – what it has done is issue vast amounts of stock options to its officers and employees to keep them working at very low rates of pay.
The problem is, should Microsoft’s stock begin to slide seriously, as it eventually must, those holding options would have every reason to exercise them as soon as possible. Once some employees exercise their options, they will hold Microsoft stock, which, loosing value, obviously must be sold immediately, further depressing the stock and causing other options holds to panic. This activity among insiders will result in panic among other investors. A major bloodbath will ensue, and fortunes will be decimated overnight.
Once their options were exercised, key Microsoft employees would no longer have any incentive to stay with the company, since the rising value of their options was the main reason to put up with low pay and strenuous working conditions.
[ UPDATE: - 10-11-00 - With their stock sliding rather than growing, the options ploy for recruitment and retention is no longer viable. Microsoft has restructured their compensation program to bring them to "low middle" instead of "low" on the industry scale. This will significantly increase their labor costs. ]
Should Microsoft try to prevent an options panic by revaluing stock options, they would incur the wrath of all other investors who would be given no such protection, so a mass sell-off would certainly ensue anyway, with further pressure on the options.
[ UPDATE: - 10-11-00 - When Microsoft's stock valuation hit 1/3 of its high, the company had to do something about stock options. To avoid angering investors, rather than revalue the options Microsoft issued matching options, holding off the problem for the moment but doubling their long term exposure ]
Once the stock has crashed, Microsoft will lose the confidence of corporate America. In fact corporate management will start to wonder about future viability, and Microsoft’s marketing advantage will be seriously damaged. Windows, already a cost problem and obsolete in many ways, will suffer severely.
Microsoft’s Public Image – Billions Well Spent
Key to Microsoft’s success is its public image. Whatever reality may be, it is critical for Microsoft to keep the public on its side. To this end they employ a number of PR (Public Relations) firms, most prominently Waggener Edstrom. Microsoft pays Waggener Edstrom about a quarter of a billion $$ a year (that’s billion with a B) and other PR firms many millions more to keep Bill Gate’s image polished and Microsoft shining in the public eye.
Humans are pack animals, and packs can’t have a lot of leaders, so most people are genetically disposed to admire and follow a rich and powerful leader. Microsoft’s PR campaigns have been highly successful. Even with evidence of its true personality pouring off the TV screen and printed page, the American public remains faithful to the image.
“Another PR firm, Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, was much in the news in April 1998. Microsoft, concerned about image damage from the Department of Justice investigation, had Edelman put together a program to fake spontaneous “grass roots” support for Microsoft.”So how was this achieved? Fortunately, we don’t have to guess. Pam Edstrom is a principal of Waggener Edstrom. She has a daughter, Jenifer. Jenifer wrote a book, Barbarians Lead by Bill Gates detailing her mother’s work. This book is not on Microsoft’s recommended reading list.
Astro-Turf – Another PR firm, Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, was much in the news in April 1998. Microsoft, concerned about image damage from the Department of Justice investigation, had Edelman put together a program to fake spontaneous “grass roots” support for Microsoft. Prominent public and industry personalities were to be paid to submit Microsoft prepared letters and columns to newspapers and magazines as their own. This is known as an “astro-turf” campaign in honor of it’s fake grass roots.
“Pam Edstrom is a principal of Waggener Edstrom. She has a daughter, Jenifer. Jenifer wrote a book, Barbarians Lead by Bill Gates detailing her mother’s work. This book is not on Microsoft’s recommended reading list.”The Los Angeles Times obtained a set of Microsoft / Edelman planning documents and published an expose. Microsoft immediately denied everything. When it became obvious nobody believed them, they claimed it was just a proposal and they had not acted on it. Faced with the fact that the main kick-off had already been held with PR people flown in from all over the country, Microsoft responded that they “had a right” to tell their story. In other words, Microsoft feels they have a right to pay people to deceive the public. For more information see “Links” [k1,k2,k3]
Microsoft has apparently made good on it’s claimed “right” to go ahead with this campaign. Since the LA Times article, many letters and columns displaying an unusual sameness in subject, wording and lack of substantiation have been published in many newspapers and magazines.
Above and beyond all this is Microsoft’s massive advertising budget, one of the largest on the planet – an advertising budget that makes the editors of most industry magazines willing conduits for the Microsoft public relations story.
Beyond paid PR, there is a considerable effort using Microsoft employees who “participate” in on-line discussion groups, usually without admitting they are Microsoft employees.
The most famous “participation” case was the “Barkto incident”. A person calling himself Steve Barkto appeared in OS/2 discussion groups claiming to be a big IBM customer in Oklahoma who had adopted OS/2. Barkto had nothing good to say about OS/2 or IBM, and many of the things he said were outright lies. His posting was traced back to an account that was paid for by the credit card of Rick Segal, a high Microsoft executive.
“WagEd is not part of Microsoft. They can be subpoenaed. Brought to court they might tell the truth to avoid a perjury conviction. Microsoft is forced to do its own PR on some issues, and isn’t at all good at it.”Years ago, on-line postings by Microsoft “shills” were easy to spot. Not only did they spout the party line precisely, but their grammar and spelling were always excellent – highly unusual for newsgroup posts. They learn – today’s shills use some of the worst spelling seen on the net and are often almost incoherent. pro Microsoft “Shill fests” often follow magazine articles embarrassing to Microsoft but verified to be true. If you can’t deny it, bring out the shills!
The most prominent MS shill today is Michael Merlin, who claims to post from Paris France (his variable command of English has aroused suspicion he is more than one person). Michael denounces as a lie any statement critical of Microsoft, and claims all witnesses who testified against Microsoft in the DOJ case were lying. He will not answer any question as to his financial relationship with Microsoft (and he has been asked many times).
Microsoft and the Truth – “Have we been introduced?”
Prominent InfoWorld columnist Nick Petreley, who is also a bible student, wrote a column in 1997 based on the passage “When the devil speaks lies, he speaks his native tongue”. According to Mr. Petreley, Microsoft is not the devil, but, “Should Microsoft ever meet up with the devil, they won’t need a translator.” He gave plenty of examples. Unfortunately, practically any statement from Microsoft, whether about the company, its products or the products of others, must be presumed to be, at the least, a misrepresentation of fact.
A recent Microsoft’s distortion is to imply they invented XML, which they most certainly did not. They submitted some improvements to the XML DTD (data definition section) and the W3C committe accepted them with little change. The claim is probably a face saving move since XML is so central to Microsoft’s .NET initiative, but it is untrue just the same.
Microsoft has long depended on the PR firm Waggener Edstrom to cover up and smooth over. WagEd has done a magnificent job of creating a public image completely unrelated to reality, and truly deserves the hundreds of millions Microsoft has paid them. The reason the image is now crumbling is simple. Microsoft is in court. WagEd is not part of Microsoft. They can be subpoenaed. Brought to court they might tell the truth to avoid a perjury conviction. Microsoft is forced to do its own PR on some issues, and isn’t at all good at it.
Watching the Justice Department directly contrast Bill Gates’ testimony against his own email has introduced the public to what we in the industry have long known. Here’s another lovely example. Microsoft denounced Wendy Goldwin Rholm’s book The Secret Microsoft Files as “pure fiction” – then, in court, accused Caldera of leaking confidential documents to Goldwin Rholm (obtained for the Caldera vs Microsoft court battle). So which is it, all lies or leaked truth?
It isn’t at all unusual for a large and active corporation to have a few lawsuits against it. What is different about Microsoft is the nature of the suits, their number, and that they are found clearly guilty on just about every one that goes to trial. A fair number they just buy out of to avoid the embarrassment of yet another loss.
Microsoft has so many actions against it, we can only cover the most important. Most of Microsoft’s (alleged) victims don’t have the resources to sue, especially since Microsoft may have already used their own technology to destroy them. Of those who do sue Microsoft, some of the most obvious cases are simply paid off under a nondisclosure agreement, so we never hear of them. Others get nowhere because the victim doesn’t have the money to be effective against Microsoft’s huge legal department.
By 2003 monetary judgements and pay-offs had spawned a mini industry engaged in suing Microsoft for patent infringement. As the quantity increased the quality decreased, so Microsoft has been winning some of them.
- 19 Dec 2003 – Mythic sues over game title – Mythic runs an on-line multi-player role playing game based on Norse, Arthurian and Celtic mytholigy. Microsoft is setting up an on-line multi-player role playing game based on Norse mythology titled Mythica. Mythic asked Microsoft to change the name and they refused (A16). Microsoft has used this trick before – name an imitative product close enough to a successful product to create confusion, then overwhelm that product with massive marketing. In the case of case of Palm PC vs. Palm Pilot they were forced to back off.
- 2 Oct 2003 – Los Angeles – a class-action lawsuit has been filed against Microsoft for myriad security problems and remedies too complex for the public to understand. A new California privacy protection law made this lawsuit possible despite Microsoft’s licenses, which disclaim responsibility for anything and everything. It remains to be seen if this usage of the law will fly.
- 18 Dec 2003 – Real Network Sues Microsoft – This is a major antitrust action and long been expected. During the DoJ antitrust trial Microsoft rushed out an unfinished and defective abomination called “Windows Me” to “integrate” Windows Media Player before the courts could prevent it. This was a direct attack against Real Networks (A9, A10, A11).
Microsoft executives themselves described the action as exactly the way they attacked Netscape except “starting earlier”. Microsoft’s actions against Netscape were ruled illegal by the court, a verdict upheld unanimously on appeal, but the newly installed Bush/Ashcroft DoJ declined to apply any meaningful remedy.
- 14 Oct 2003 – E-Data Sues – I suspect this music download technology action (which also involves Tiscali and OD2) involving 1985 patents (A2) hopes to capitalize on Microsoft’s stunning loss to Eolis on streaming media technology.
- 14 Oct 2003 – Israel Ministry of Commerce has suspended all contracts with Microsoft for monopoly abuse (A1). This ban extends through 2004, so there will be no upgrades to Windows 2003 or Office 2003 at least through that period. The ministry is
investigating OpenOffice. as an alternative. This application of Israel’s antitrust law was forced by groups protesting the fact that Microsoft refuses to provide “right to left” language support for the Apple version of of its monopoly Microsoft Office product. This
support is needed for Hebrew, Arabic and Urdu.
- Oct 2002 – SPX sued Microsoft over the “whitboard” feature of NetMeeting, which they claimed infringed their patent. Microsoft has since removed the whiteboard feature from the latest version with the explanation, “We regret that we are no longer able to offer Whiteboard in this version of NetMeeting” but still claims they do not infringe the SPX patent. Conclusion: 14-Nov-2003, the jury awarded SPX $62 Million (A8).
- 19 Jun 2002 – Burst.com, a publisher of multimedia distribution and playback software, has filed suit against Microsoft for patent infringement, antitrust, unfair business practices, trade secrets violations and breach of contract. It’s the same old story. Microsoft sees useful technology. Microsoft and originator enter license negotiations. Microsoft gets good inside look at technology. License negotiations suddenly end. Microsoft issues similar product infringing on patents and copyrights. Microsoft moves to kill originator quickly to reduce or eliminate settlement costs. Here’s the anouncement from Burst.
- 25 Mar 2002 – Network Commerce has been given a court date for it’s suit against Microsoft for infringing its pattents on a method of selling software, digital music and digital audio over the Internet. InfoWorld Article
- 7 Mar 2002 – Sun Microsystems filed a private antitrust suit over Microsoft’s efforts to kill Java as a multiplatform system. This action was long expected. With Microsoft now convicted for abusing a monopoly, and the charges upheld on appeal, Sun needs only show damages. Microsoft can be penalized tripple damages under the law. Register Article – InfoWorld Article
- 17 Feb 2002 – Be has filed a private antitrust suit against Microsoft claiming that Microsoft leveraged its Windows monopoly power to totally destroy Be’s ability to field a competing (and highly superior) operating system. Microsoft’s licensing to OEM’s states that if Windows is on a hard disk, no other operating system may be on that hard disk. This prevents “dual boot” or selective install configurations, the only way a competing system could be commercially distributed. Several OEMs had agreed to include BeOS on their systems, but Microsoft reminded them that if they did they would lose their license to distribute Windows. Be was eventually forced to liquidate, and sold its assets to Palm, but retained the right to sue Microsoft. This is considered by many to be a very strong and clear cut case. Tripple damages may apply. InfoWorld Article
- 22 Jan 2002 – AOL / Netscape has filed a private antitrust suit against Microsoft for leveraging it’s monopoly to destroy Netscape’s Web browser market. Since Microsoft has been found guilty, and guilt upheld on appeal, of precisely this action, chances of Netscape getting some satisfaction are considered good. Tripple damages may apply. InfoWorld Article
- 6 Sep 2001 – South Korea ISP Daum Communications filed for an injunction against Windows XP based on antitrust charges. The complaint charges that Microsoft’s inclusion of Microsoft Instant Messaging in Windows XP unfairly competes against other companies that offer Instant Messaging services. Similar charges are expected in Europe, and possibly in the United States.
- 2 Jul 2001 – Eastman Kodak considers anti-trust action against Microsoft. After years of working with Microsoft on a standard for digital cameras, Kodak found Microsoft had completely hijacked the photo software in Windows XP, loading its own software instead of Kodak’s and redirecting photo orders and charging for every photo ordered through Windows. Kodak’s threats were apparently effective, Microsoft has promised changes and this action is on hold pending release of Windows XP when those changes can be confirmed. Article: eCommerce Times Article: InfoWorld.
- 27 Apr 2001 – Intertrust Technology Sues for Patenet Infringement. Microsoft intends to take over the digital music distribution business with Microsoft Media Player (permanently embedded into Windows XP). They offer the music moguls a secure method which prevents copying of copyrighted works, but that technology appears to belong to Intertrust. Article.
- 26 Feb 2001 – FTC Charges False and Misleading Advertising (again). This time it’s an advertisement comparing a new Windows CE device to an older model Palm Pilot. They didn’t bother to mention the Windows device was using extra cost wireless add-ons, and didn’t make clear that current model Palm Pilots come with this wireless capability built in. More in our News Item.
- 14 Feb 2001 – Department of Justice Opens New Investigation. Microsoft recently “invested” $135 million in Corel, one of it’s few remaining competitors. In return they got a written agreement to support .NET with all their products. While not part of the (written) agreement, Corel backed off from Linux and said it would not try to win new WordPerfect users away from Microsoft. More in our News Item.
- Nov 2000 – WebTV Settles With FTC – Microsoft’s WebTV division is being required by the Federal Trade Commission to launch a “consumer education” campaign to counter false and misleading advertising. They must also reimburse some former subscribers to their services. WebTV was acquired by Microsoft a couple years ago amid great fear they would leverage it to monopolize the interactive television market. So far they haven’t come up with a product anyone wants.
- Oct 2000 – Racial Discrimination Suite Filed – Monique Donaldson’s suit claims Microsoft lacks racial equality guidlines and allows managers to apply their own prejudices, resulting in self perpetuation of a white male management structure. Donaldson’s lawyers are seeking class action status for the lawsuit. Article.
[ UPDATE: Nov-00 - class action status has been established with 13 plaintiffs and requested damages have been upped to $5 billion. The same judge Thomas Penfield Jackson who found Microsoft guilty of antitrust violations presides. It must be getting pretty hard to find a judge who hasn't already found Microsoft guilty of something. Article ]
- Sep 2000 – Employee Fired by e-Mail – sues, wins big. Judge Russell Peterson says, “An inference may reasonably be drawn that the conduct of Microsoft was designed to ensure that the applicant did not receive his 1999 stock options”. Stock options are an important aspect of employment at Microsoft, compensating for low pay, thus preventing Michael Canizales from exercising his options is a denial of just compensation. The award may be as high as $9 million. Details at CNet.
- Jun 2000 – Hyperphrase Sues Over Patent – Hyperphrase claimed the “Smart Tags” feature of Microsoft Office 2000 violated several of its patents for database search (A15). On 25-Sep-2003 this case was settled by summary judgement in Microsoft’s favor.
The judge ruled Hyperphrase’s patents differed to much from the action of Smart Tags.
- Mar 2000 – Europe Launches Second Anti-trust Investigation of Microsoft – With one anti-trust investigation on hold pending conclusion of the U.S. Department of Justice’s case against Microsoft, Europe has started another investigation into anti-competitive aspects of Windows 2000. If you read our article “Adopting Windows 2000″ you will see they have plenty of material to work with. More at The Register.
- Jan 2000 – Over 100 Class Action Suits Filed – The sharks smell blood in the water. Lawyers are now rushing to take cases against Microsoft they wouldn’t have touched with a laser pointer at 30 paces a few months ago. If there is no settlement with the DOJ and judge Jackson issues a Finding of Law, these will all go ahead with their basis (monopoly power) considered already proven.
[ UPDATE: - 9-2000 - Several of these class action suits (about 140 now) have been dropped on a technicality (the injured did not buy directly from Microsoft), but California does not have that exception and judge has approved a suit to go to trial. ]
- Feb 1999 – Eolas Sues Microsoft Over Patent – Eolas sought an injunction against shipments of Microsoft Internet Explorer (no embeded within Windows) and damages for a browser plug-in method for which it was awarded a patent (A13). On 12-Aug-2003 a jury awarded Eolas $521 million in damages. Microsoft promised to appeal and started modifying Internet Explorer rather than license the technology (A12, A4). This is considered a bad judgement by the industry because of “prior art” and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has agreed to reexamin the patent (A14).
- Dec 17, 1998 – Blue Mountain Arts Sues Microsoft – . The leading publisher of on-line Internet greeting cards has filed suit against Microsoft for unfair trade practices. The suit claims Microsoft set up a competing greeting card site, then distributed trial versions of the Internet Explorer Web browser that divert Blue Mountain greetings into a trash folder instead of delivering them.
Microsoft responded that this feature of IE, when turned on by the user, also diverts Microsoft greeting cards into the trash folder. Microsoft also claims they offered to help Blue Mountain develop a way around this problem, but Blue Mountain did not respond.
We suspect Microsoft may be right on this one (not every suit against Microsoft has merit), but it does point out the power Microsoft will gain over other Internet companies if they succeed in establishing an Internet Explorer monopoly.
[ Woops! 12-22-98 - the judge didn't agree with our opinion and slapped an injunction on Microsoft. Well, he knows a lot more about the case than we do, so we will have to presume the case does have merit. ]
- Dec 1998 – Mouse Designer Sues Microsoft. Goldtouch Technologies has sued Microsoft for $1 billion in punitive damages and compensatory damages for patent infringement, theft of trade secrets and fraud. Gouldtouch meet with Microsoft in 1997 in hopes
the industry giant would license and market its ergonomic mouse design. Instead, the suit claims, Microsoft carefully examined the product, then imitated it and marketed the imitation as the IntelliMouse Pro. This is not the first time Microsoft has been accused of this trick.
- Dec 1998 – Court Denies Microsoft Access to Professors’ Research. Professors Michael Cusumano and David Yoffie wrote a book Competing on Internet Time: lessons from Netscape and its Battle with Microsoft. Microsoft subpoenaed the research notes and confidential interview tapes on which the book was based. In a major freedom of the press decision, Microsoft’s subpoena was denied, and the denial upheld on appeal.
- 1998 – Ed Curry vs. Microsoft – not filed yet because Curry, his business destroyed by Microsoft, hasn’t found a lawyer willing to take the case. Curry was Microsoft’s security consultant, charged with interfacing with the government on matters concerning security certification for Windows NT. According to Curry, he refused to lie to the government, so Microsoft took revenge and is now unable to get consulting work because Microsoft intimidates prospective employers.
[ UPDATE - Nov 1999 - This case will not be brought because Ed Curry (in his 50s) died of a stroke leaving his family in dire financial straits. Stress is thought to be a contributing factor. ]
- 1998 – Department of Justice antitrust action against Microsoft – going to trial now. Originally brought based on Microsoft’s leveraging its monopoly to crush Netscape, it continues to broaden. The key to this action is whether or not Microsoft has a monopoly. If they are shown to have a monopoly, then it will be relatively easy to show they have leveraged that monopoly illegally.
Pundits in the press and in academia have one thing to say to Microsoft: “settle now”. In the words of one prominent antitrust scholar, “If Microsoft looses this case, the repercussions could be stunning”.
Microsoft, realizing judge Jackson is competent on technology matters, sassed the judge in his own courtroom, a technique they have used in the past to provoke an angry response, which they then use to get the judge removed on grounds of “prejudice”. Judge Jackson remained cool as a cucumber, so Microsoft is now stuck with a judge who is technologically competent and ill disposed to their tricks (they fooled him last time – it isn’t going to happen again).
[ UPDATE: Finding of Fact - Guilty! - NOV 1999 - Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson concluded that Microsoft did have a monopoly and used it improperly to leverage other products. The judge then appointed a mediator, judge Richard Posner, and urged both sides to settle the case (Jackson really doesn't want to have to hand down a final verdict). ]
[ UPDATE: Finding of Law - Guilty! - 3 APR 2000 - After negotiations finally failed, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson handed down a final verdict in his Finding of Law. Nearly all charges by the Department of Justice were upheld. A couple of minor items were set aside as "not proven", which means they can be brought up again. ]
[ UPDATE: Appeals Court Gets Case - 26 SEP 2000 - The Department of Justice had requested the case be expedited directly to the Supreme Court, but the Supremes decided to send it to the DC Court of Appeals first. Microsoft had campaigned strongly for the DC court which they feel is pro Microsoft. In an unusual move, the entire court will hear the case. ]
[ UPDATE: Microsoft Loses Appeal - 29 JUN 2001 - Microsoft suffered a stunning defeat in the DC Court of Appeals (which everyone had presumend would let them off). For analysis, see our article Appeals Court: "Guilty!". ]
[ UPDATE: Justice asks for Acceleration - 13 JUL 2001 - The Department of Justice has asked the Court of Appeals to waive the 52 day period for Microsoft to ask for a rehearing of the case. They base this on the fact that the verdict was by all 7 judges and was unanimous, so the court is certain not to allow a rehearing. This indicates Justice intends to attack the Windows XP release. ]
- 1998 – Attorneys General of 20 states sue Microsoft. These suits have been partially rolled into the Department of Justice case, but in a way that does not preclude the states bringing additional charges upon conclusion of Justice’s case.
- 1998 – Sun Microsystems sues Microsoft – the Java case – being tried now. Microsoft, recognizing that Sun’s Java environment could make Windows irrelevant, determined to corrupt and pervert it. To that end they needed to license the language from Sun. Sun, wishing to promote Java to the greatest extent possible, felt licensing it to Microsoft would be greatly to their advantage, although Gosling, its primary creator, felt dealing with Microsoft at all was too dangerous.
Sun wrote terms into the license designed to prevent Microsoft from corrupting and perverting Java. Sun’s claim is that Microsoft clearly and immediately violated these terms and continues to do so.
[ NEWS FLASH! 17 NOV 1998 - Judge Ronald Whyte handed Microsoft an injunction requiring them to make their Java compliant or remove it entirely within 90 days. 19 NOV 1998 - Microsoft has stated they will bring their Java into compliance with Sun's requirements. ]
[ UPDATE: - Jan 2000 - The Java injunction against Microsoft was renewed. This will make the injunction permanent, because Microsoft's license will expire soon. Microsoft, of course, declared victory. ]
[ CONCLUSION: - 24-Jan-01 - Microsoft settles with Sun. Faced with all but certain loss in court, Microsoft will pay $20 million and is banned from all things Java for eternity. Microsoft declared victory. ]
- 1997 – Caldera sues Microsoft – being tried now. When Microsoft and IBM brought out DOS, Digital Research sued, claiming DOS included copyrighted Digital Research code. DR’s Gary Kildall was able, using a secret code, to pop up a DR copyright notice on the PC IBM had brought to court. Case won.
Aside from monetary damages, DR won the right to clone DOS, which they eventually did with DR-DOS. Microsoft, unwilling to tolerate the slightest crack in their monopoly, fought DR-DOS with every means at their disposal, including unethical and probably illegal means. Caldera, current owner of Digital Research’s products, has sued over the illegal part. The judge on the case considers Caldera’s case so strong he has allowed them to expand it.
Repercussions for Microsoft, should they lose this case, could be serious, as it directly attacks some of their favorite business practices.
[ CONCLUSION: - 11-Jan-2000 - Microsoft Buys Out - Realizing they were going to lose big time, and how much of their dirty laundry Caldera was going to air out, Microsoft paid them off and demanded a gag order on the case. Microsoft then made a loud
public announcement implying the cost was a mere $150 million. While the true figure is secret, analysts believe it was somewhere between $350 and $500 million. ]
[ UPDATE: - Some Case Documents Released - A judge in Utah released, over strong protest from Microsoft, a large number of documents from the Caldera case to a newspaper that sued for them under the Freedom of Information act. More documents may be released later. ]
[ UPDATE: - 21-Feb-2001 - link to the "dirty laundry list" with the case details and some of the evidence (it looks like an ftp index, but the .html files will display when selected and the pdfs will download). ]
- 1998 – AT&T sues Microsoft – over code for Windows NT. Wishing to expand the influence of NT software, Microsoft had licensed Windows NT code to AT&T so they could create Unix modules allowing NT software to run on Unix. Microsoft decided this was no longer desirable and refused to upgrade AT&T’s code to current versions, destroying AT&T’s investment in the product line.
[ CONCLUSION: Microsoft Buys Out - Apparently AT&T was too powerful an adversary to be steamrolled in the usual Microsoft manner, so they paid off to get out of the case. Gag order part of the deal as usual. ]
- 1998 – Bristol Technologies sues Microsoft – going to trial now. Same as the AT&T case, except Bristol is much smaller, so Microsoft intends to crush them rather than pay them off.
[ UPDATE: - The jury gave Bristol a partial victory, and awarded them damages of $1.00. Apparently the jurors figured anyone stupid enough to make a deal with Microsoft deserves what they get, a very reasonable approach. Bristol is considering an appeal. ]
[ UPDATE: - Sep 2000 - Not so fast there! Seems the Judge didn't agree with the jury, felt they may have misinterpreted their instructions. Judge has accused Microsoft of untrue and deceptive testimony, and fined them $1 million. Case may be reopened for further action. Find more at The Register Article-1 and Article-2. ]
[ UPDATE: - Nov 2000 - Another $3.7 million awarded to Bristol. Case could be retried for even more damages. Article ]
[ CONCLUSION: - 20 Feb 2001 - Microsoft buys out yet again - and yes, they bought a gag order again, so the depth of their defeat cannot be known (except through leaks). Since Microsoft's original victory was ascribed entirely to a bad jury instruction, the judge made it plain Bristol could go another round. Facing almost certain defeat, Microsoft pulled out the 'ol wallet. More at The Register ]
- 1997 – Borland sues Microsoft. Borland is Microsoft’s primary competitor in programming tools for the Windows environment, and Borland’s tools are widely considered of higher quality and more innovative than Microsoft’s. Tired of sabotaging Borland’s products by continuously changing Windows and demanding concessions for certain necessary licenses, Microsoft started raiding Borland for its key development personnel, offering signing bonuses exceeding a million dollars. Upon hiring, some of these persons were simply sent on extended vacation. [ CONCLUSION: Microsoft Buys Out Facing a nearly certain loss, Microsoft paid off rather go to trial. As always, Microsoft demanded a gag order on the settlement. ]
- 1998 – Microsoft Loses Suit to SCO. The case was tried in Europe, and since the settlement was worldwide, SCO dropped actions within the United States. An old AT&T contract forced SCO to include obsolete Microsoft code in its Unix operating system and pay a substantial royalty, making SCO’s product less competitive.
- 1998 – Microsoft sued by Temp Workers – workers won. In a landmark “abuse of temps” judgment, Microsoft has to pay back benefits. More action is pending. Meanwhile, Microsoft is resorting to even sleazier tricks to avoid paying benefits (temps are forced
to quit after a set time, then hired back a week later).
[ CONCLUSION: - Dec-00 - Microsoft agrees to pay $96 million to settle "permatemp" claims. ]
- 1998 – Microsoft Investigated by Japan – In a major antitrust action, the Japanese government raided Microsoft offices and removed all filing cabinets and hard disks for investigation.
[ CONCLUSION: - NOV 1998 - Japan's investigation found Microsoft had used unfair trade practices and has admonished Microsoft, but will not bring the issue to trial as Microsoft has discontinued the bundling practices subject to the investigation. ]
- 1998 – Microsoft Investigated by European Union – ongoing. This is basically the same sort of action as Japan’s – less the confiscation of records. (Index)
- 1998 – Department of Justice Investigates Microsoft for Attempting Illegal Collusion – ongoing. Charges may be filed based on Netscape’s claim that Microsoft attempted to coerce them into a collusion deal to divide up the Internet. “It was scary, just like a visit
from the ‘Godfather’” says Netscape’s Andresen. It appears just such a deal may have been made with Sybase to divide up the low end SQL database market with Microsoft taking Windows, and Sybase getting everything else. Evidence is insufficient to bring charges at this time.
- 1998 – Department of Justice Investigates Microsoft – ongoing. The current antitrust action is far from all the irons Justice has in the Microsoft fire. Charges on other matters may be brought at any time.
- 1998 – 3Com sues Microsoft – Palm Pilot vs. Palm PC. Microsoft bailed out of this one rather than face yet another loss. It involved one of their favorite tricks: name a copycat product almost identically with the dominant product, then promote the hell out of the (often not yet existent) Microsoft product until the public thinks of Microsoft whenever they hear the name of the competitor’s product.
- 1998 – Microsoft Investigated by Ralph Nader – ongoing. Ralph Nader has determined that Microsoft uses predatory business practices which will eventually work to the disadvantage of consumers. Nader’s organization has issued a detailed report on Microsoft’s business practices which is now being used as a reference by other investigators.
- 1998 – Microsoft Investigated by Congress. Jessie Helms asked hard questions and Bill Gates gave evasive answers in Congressional hearings. Gates repeatedly denied, despite compelling evidence to the contrary, that Microsoft has a monopoly in desktop operating systems. The reason – it would be tantamount to admitting Microsoft is violating antitrust laws.
- 1998 – Spyglass Sues Microsoft – Microsoft Buys Out. Microsoft, upon “discovering” the Internet, needed a Web browser. They licensed one from Spyglass, and promised to pay royalties as a percentage of each sale. The Spyglass browser was enhanced and renamed “Internet Explorer”. Microsoft then gave it away free – screwing Spyglass out of its royalties. Spyglass sued for deception and Microsoft bought out of the suit for a one-time fee.
- 1998 – Italy Sues Microsoft – Yet Another Anti-Trust Action. We don’t know anything about this one yet, except that it is happening.
- 1998 – Microsoft Faces Charges in Brazil We don’t know much about this one yet, but Microsoft has stated, “We aren’t doing anything wrong and we will be vindicated”
- 1997 – Cookie Jar Reserve – Former internal audit chief, Charles Pancerzewski, sued Microsoft for forcing him to resign when he brought up the matter of Microsft using a “cookie jar reserve” to Microsoft executives. This tactic is used to smooth earnings reports and violates GAAP (Generally Accespted Accounting Practices) and U.S. securities law. This case was settled out of court with a substantial payment to Mr. Pancerzewski, and as always, Microsoft got the records sealed to prevent public disclosure. Article
- 1995 – Syn’x Relief sues Microsoft for Software Piracy. A number of pioneering 3D animation features developed by French company Syn’x Relief for their product Character. They were negotiating a license for several features to a developer named SoftImage, which was acquired by Microsoft. Negotiations were broken off when SoftImage made unreasonable demands. These features are unambiguous and unique in the industry, and Microsoft promised to remove them all from the SoftImage product. Microsoft did not remove any of them and Syn’x Relief found they had no recourse but to sue.
[CONCLUSION - 8 Dec 2001] – Microsoft was found guilty of software piracy and fined. They promised to appeal to keep this in the courts until Syn’x Relief gives up. – Article
- 1995- Department of Justice sues over Intuit buyout. Microsoft’s Balmer declared they intended to charge “vigorish” (a booky’s cut) on every electronic financial transaction made. To this end, they set out to buy Intuit, a company which has a near monopoly on
on-line banking transactions for their Quicken customers. Intuit’s management was more than happy to sell. Since this would give Microsoft a monopoly on personal finance software (91%) and on-line financial transactions, competitors asked for relief from the goverenment. Microsoft showed up in court loaded for bear, with more lawyers than everyone else combined. The
first thing they did was subpoena all their competitor’s marketing plans. It looked like they had a good chance of getting them – when the case suddenly came to an end.
[ CONCLUSION: Microsoft found they had neglected to respond to a request for information in a timely manner. This placed them at the mercy of the court. Figuring the court was real short of mercy at this point, they cut and ran. Bill Gates got up at a news conference and told the media "This case would distract us from our work", and the Intuit buyout was dropped. ]
- 1994 – Stac sues Microsoft – Wins. In one of the few cases where a victimized company had the resources to sue Microsoft, Stac proved in court that Microsoft had stolen their technology. Microsoft counter sued over a minor point and also won, but millions of dollars went Stac’s way. Microsoft then coerced Stac into licensing their technology on terms favorable to Microsoft and Stac is no longer in the disk compression software business.
- 1982 – Digital Research sues Microsoft and IBM – Wins – . It was obvious MS-DOS and its PC-DOS variant were simply rip-offs of Digital Research’s CP/M operating system. It remained only to prove it contained DR code. DR’s Gary Kildall sat down at an IBM
PC supplied by IBM and, using a secret code, got it to pop up a Digital Research copyright notice. It’s case won, Digital Research received monetary compensation and the right to clone MS-DOS. This is why Microsoft never sued DR over DR-DOS, but used every other means to destroy it. The settlement was under a strict non- disclosure agreement, so few
even know DR sued, never mind that they won. Digital Research was purchased by Novell and destroyed by neglect and mismanagement. The products now belong to Caldera, which has filed suit against Microsoft over predatory practices used to destroy DR-DOS’s market.
Links
- k1 – Los Angeles Times – Microsoft Plans Stealth Media Blitz
- k2 – ABC News – Microsoft Plans Fake Letters?
- k3 – WCCO News – Microsoft Sets Media ‘Spamming’
- A1 – Israel Strikes – The Register – Israel slams the door on Microsoft
- A2 – E-Data Sues – The Inquirer – Firm sues Microsoft over music download service
- A3 – Eolas – CNet News.Com – Eolas files motion to enjoin IE
- A4 – Eolas – Fox News – Jury Orders Microsoft to Pay More Than $520 Million
- A5 – Security Lawsuit – Reuters – Microsoft Faces Class-Action on Security Breaches
- A6 – Burst – ZDNet – Did Microsoft ‘steal’ Media Player 9 technology?
- A7 – Class Actions – The Register – Microsoft settles six more suits
- A8 – SPX patent – InfoWorld -Microsoft ordered to pay $62M in patent suit
- A9 – Real sues Microsoft – The Register – Why Real sued Microsoft
- A10 – Real sues Microsoft – eWeek – RealNetworks Sues Microsoft Over Antitrust
- A11 – Microsoft responds to Real – eWeek – Microsoft Responds to Real Networks Suit
- A12 – Eolas Win – Computerworld – Microsoft ordered to pay $520M in patent dispute
- A13 – Eolas Patent Suit – Computerworld – Patent suit targets Windows, IE
- A14 – Eolas: USPTO – eWeek – Patent Office to Reconsider Eolas Claims
- A15 – Hyperphrase Patent Suit – Computerworld – Microsoft prevails in Office Smart Tag patent suit
- A16 – Mythic sues over Mythica – The Register – Mythic sues Microsoft over Mythica
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