Bonum Certa Men Certa

Iowa Memos Provide a Mouthful About Novell and Microsoft

The relationship between Novell and Microsoft has never been a healthy one. Some weeks ago we mentioned the newly-leaked memos, extracted through Comes vs. Microsoft (class action at Iowa and the most recent antitrust case).

What will you get out of a little bit of browsing through thousands of document which expose Microsoft's dirty tricks? Well, for one, Novell's involvement leads to some interesting finds. So, let us dive in and explore the relationship between Microsoft and Novell in the last decade, shall we?

In some of the following memos, Novell argued that Microsoft had refused to fix bugs and even hid/excluded necessary files, APIs, and documentation. I would like to thank 'Doug Mentohl' for extracting the text from the scanned exhibits, beginning with this one:

Novell Confidential No 6665

Product and Price Change Notification

Attached a copy of the standard business and financial plans.

Originator: John Bodine Ext: 2.7082 Mailstop: ORM D-167

Type of change

X Other Patch Disk

FCS Date 7/10/95

[...]

Patch Disk for WordPerfect and PerfectOffice

The Windowes Product Marketing team, in conjunction with developement has decided to produce a and distribute a "patch" disk for both PerfectOffice and WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows. To reiterate, the reason we have decided to produce a patch is to address two main concerns:

1) Win95 compatibility

2) High priority bugs

It should be noted that these bugs, for the most part, are not problems with our software (the Win95 bugs are problems we addressed with Microsoft which they refused to fix). In both cases, the patch will be limited to one diskette.

These patch disks provide updates to WordPerfect 6.1, Presentations 3.0, and the PerfectOffice 3.0 Desktop Application Director (in the PexfectFit directory). The patch disks address key complaints that technical services and large accounts are currently receiving, such as memory leaks, Support of DOS in a network environment (DuPont, 100,000 users), ODMA problems, temp files eating up hard disk space, problems with styles, DDE link problems, and printing problems with Presentations.

In addition some known problems with running PerfectOffice 3.0 on Windows 95 have been addressed such as prompting for network ID when opened, bad title bar display, Show Me problems with Coaches, and Grammatik GPF’s.

The time line for completion of the patch disks are as follows:

6/27 - Gold master candidate released to testing-testing continues throughout weekend

7/5 - First Article candidate released to MFG.

7/6 - Manufacturing to begin duplicating disks

The disks will be available for download off our Novell home page and over our electronic bulletin board services. The disk will also be available directly, via our 800 numbers. The disks are sent out free of charge.

[...]

Tota cost for this project: $11,500.00


An example of technical sabotage and missing documentation can IBM has been referring to can be found here.

From: Richard Jones To : Internet : yvesm@microsoft.com Date: 7/21/95 9:48am subject: A couple of issues

Hi Yves,

I wanted to check that you received our Alpha 11 CD early last week. I checked with our Beta administrator and it was sent to John Ludwig.

I have one issue that was escalated to me by our messaging group concerning MAPI. Here is the message:

"My MAPI service providers that used to work in the M7 time frame (January beta) no longer seem to work. Can we get documentation on the changes that have been made to the SPls (especially transport and address book) since M7.

Thanks,

Bruce Greerublatt"

Bruce had sent this request almost a month ago to NOVSUP and has received no response. Could you help us out please?

If there are any issues you need resolved with us, please let us know.

BTW: any more news on us getting a beta copy of "Maple’?

Thanks,

Richard Jones


Here is Novell's plea for missing header files.

Below is the text of 2 messages sent previously regarding header files and libraries for implementing a Windows 95 Password Provider. To date, we have had no response, but we need this information. Can someone please respond with the information we need?

[...]

We have the 950 DDK, and in the network.doc file, located on that CD, these same constants are mentioned, as are the API's we need to implement: PPGetPasswordStatusa and PPChangePassword.

[...]

In short, we have everything but the headers and libraries to actually implement this functionality. If the constants and API's have been removed, why are they so well documented? Also, if they have been removed, how do we integrated password changes with Windows 95.


These patterns and their intent can be summed up by once again quoting Jim Allchin, a senior Microsoft manager.

[Allchin:] We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger... If you're going to kill someone, there isn't much reason to get all worked up about it and angry. You just pull the trigger. Any discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Curation and Preservation Work
The winter is coming soon and this means our anniversary is near
Microsoft GitHub Exposé — In the Alex Graveley Case, His Lawyer, Rick Cofer, Appears to Have Bribed the DA to Keep Graveley (and Others) Out of Prison
Is this how one gets out of prison? Hire the person who bribes the DA?
Richard Stallman's Public Talk in GNU's 40th Anniversary Ceremony
Out now
Objections to binutils CoC
LXO response to proposed Code of Conduct
Conde Nast (Reddit), Which Endlessly Defamed Richard Stallman and Had Paid Salaries to Microsoft-Connected Pedophiles, Says You Must Be Over 18 to See 'Stallman Was Right'
Does this get in the way of their Bill Gates-sponsored "Bill Gates says" programme/schedule?
 
Consumerism is Lying and Revisionism
We need to reject these liars and charlatans
Links 30/09/2023: Open VFS Framework, CrossOver 23.5, Dianne Feinstein Dies
Links for the day
The forbidden topics
There are forbidden topics in the hacker community
Security Leftovers
GNU/Linux, Microsoft, and more
Microsoft Down on the World Wide Web, Shows Survey
down by a lot in this category
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 29, 2023
IRC logs for Friday, September 29, 2023
A Society That Fails Journalists Does Not Deserve Journalism
It's probably too later to save Julian Assange as a working publisher (he might never recover from the mental torture), but as a person and a father we can wish and work towards his release
Almost Nothing To Go With Your Morning's Cup Of Coffee
Newspaper? What newspaper?
A Lot of Technological 'Progress' Has Been Nothing But Buzzwords
Free software does not try to excite people people over nothing
Techrights Was Right About the Chaff Bots (They Failed to Live up to Their Promise)
Those who have been paying attention to news of substance rather than fashionable "tech trends" probably know that GNU/Linux grew a lot this year
Selling Out to Microsoft Makes You Dead Beef
If all goes as well as we've envisioned, Microsoft will get smaller and smaller
Mobile Phones Aren't Your Friend or a Gateway to Truly Social Life
Newer should not always seem more seductive, as novelty is by default questionable and debatable
Links 29/09/2023: Disinformation and Monopolies
Links for the day
iFixit Requests DMCA Exemption…To Figure Out How To Repair McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Jim Zemlin Thinks the World's Largest Software Company Has 200 Staff, Many of Whom Not Technical at All
biggest ego in the world
Links 29/09/2023: Linux Foundation Boasting, QLite FDW 2.4.0 Released
Links for the day
Red Hat Does Not Understand Community and It's Publicly Promoting Microsoft's Gartner
RedHat.com is basically lioning a firm that has long been attacking GNU/Linux in the private and public sectors at the behest of Microsoft
A 'Code of Conduct' Typically Promoted by Criminal Corporations to Protect Crimes From Scrutiny
We saw this in action last week
Techrights Extends Wishes of Good Health to Richard M. Stallman
Richard Stallman has cancer
endsoftwarepatents.org Still Going, Some Good News From Canada
a blow to software patents in Canada
The Debian Project Leader said the main thing Debian lacked was more contributors
The Debian Project Leader said the main thing Debian lacked was more contributors
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 28, 2023
IRC logs for Thursday, September 28, 2023
Links 28/09/2023: Openwashing and Patent Spam as 'News'
Links for the day
Links 28/09/2023: Preparing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.9 and 9.3 Beta
Links for the day
We Need to Liberate the Client Side and Userspace Too
Lots of work remains to be done
Recent IRC Logs (Since Site Upgrade)
better late than never
Techrights Videos Will be Back Soon
We want do publish video without any of the underlying complexity and this means changing some code
Microsoft is Faking Its Financial Performance, Buying Companies Helps Perpetuate the Big Lies (or Pass the Debt Around)
Our guess is that Microsoft will keep pretending to be huge, even as the market share of Windows (and other things) continues to decrease
Techrights Will Tell the Story (Until Next Year!) of How Since 2022 It Has Been Under a Coordinated Attack by a Horde of Vandals and Nutcases
People like these belong in handcuffs and behind bars (sometimes they are) and our readers still deserve to know the full story. It's a cautionary tale for other groups and sites
Why It Became Essential to Split GNU/Linux Stories from the Rest
These sites aren't babies anymore. In terms of age, they're already adults.
Losses and Gains in an Age of Oligarchy - A Techrights Perspective
If you don't even try to fix something, there's not even a chance it'll get fixed
Google (and the Likes Of It) Will Cause Catastrophic Information Loss Rather Than Organise the World's Information
Informational and cultural losses due to technological plunder
Links 28/09/2023: GNOME 45 Release Party, 'Smart' Homes Orphaned
Links for the day
Security Leftovers
Xen, breaches, and more
GNOME Console Won’t Support Color Palettes or Profiles; Will Support Esperanto
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer