Bonum Certa Men Certa

What Microsoft's Brad Silverberg, Bill Gates, and Al Capone Have in Common

Gangster Rice Dodge Neon



Summary: Groklaw analyses the personal contributions of Brad Silverberg and Bill Gates to crimes against Novell

BACK in January we published the text of a Comes vs Microsoft exhibit [PDF] whose page can be found here. Groklaw now has an analysis of it, which is nicely weaved together with news from the WordPerfect case.



Novell and Microsoft have each filed summary judgment motions in the antitrust litigation about WordPerfect that Novell brought against Microsoft. In addition, we find out what happened regarding the Bill Gates deposition. And neither party can find certain documents that might be in the Comes collection. I wonder if you can?

[...]

It has to do with whether or not Microsoft made certain APIs available, like IShellBrowser, iShellView, iPersistFolder, and iCommDlgBrowser. Novell says Microsoft decided to make those APIs private and iShellFolder a "read only public interface", making it impossible for Novell to use the namespace extension mechanism or implement it in a customized fashion, so Novell software couldn't rely on or invoke those APIs. The context is Windows 95 and NT, in the years between 1994 and 1996.

[...]

Update: The BoycottNovell folks have found one. We have it here also, on our Comes Exhibits page, Plaintiffs Exhibit 2158, which is an email from Microsoft's Satoshi Nakajima, dated October 10, 1994.

[...]

An anonymous comment also mentions 4293 [PDF] ("the way to shut out novell in the base is to either ship a full client or make it so there is no network connectivity" and 5673 [PDF] (Gates, October 3, 1994: "It is time for a decision on IShellBrowser....I have decided that we should not publish these extensions. We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for likes of Notes, Wordperfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage....Our goal is to have Office '96 sell better because of the shell integration work..." To which Brad Silverberg wrote: "I will jump in -- yes we have to take them out of marvel and capone too.").


Brad Silverberg is not a particularly nice guy [1, 2] and he can probably be held accountable for many of Microsoft's crimes that typically come from management, not ordinary programmers who merely follow instructions. Regarding the above article, one blogger argues that "many eyes means you cannot bury needle in haysack." Therein we are given credit for work that our reader/contributor has done studying many exhibits; there are many new "smoking guns" yet to be unraveled and only lack of time is an obstruction right now. We could use help from readers.

Further discussion follows a similar line of explanation, as already pointed out in Groklaw comments, e.g. [1, 2]. It seems safe to say that Groklaw has glued together enough PDFs and any additional commentary can be spared. The antitrust exhibits speak for themselves.

In light of all this, the most astounding thing is that Novell pardoned Microsoft and became an ally just weeks after Ray Noorda had passed away.

Jim Allchin on Novell

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
 
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October