Novell's WordPerfect Antitrust Lawsuit Against Microsoft Over Windows 95 Dismissed (Yes, This Is A 2012 Post)
from the justice-is-slow dept
Last year we noted just how odd it was that a Novell antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft over Windows 95 was still going on, but it really was. However, it may finally be over. After the jury deadlocked in December, the court has dismissed the lawsuit, claiming that Novell failed to show sufficient evidence of antitrust violations by Microsoft. But have no fear, fans of 20 years ago: Novell has promised to appeal. All I can say to that is, wait, Novell still exists?![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
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Filed Under: antitrust, windows 95, wordperfect
Companies: microsoft, novell
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Wait a hundred years or so and maybe you'll see it in the public domain (bonus points if you actually get your hands on the code at that time!)
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(cue some stupid retard shill finding a copy of it on some website, completely missing the point).
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Because to Microsoft, the thought of people using an older version of Windows is a bigger crime than pirating the latest version.
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As GNU hasn't got their kernel a quarter done yet I don't think they're in any position to lay any claim on Linux as possibly being theirs. Just as Linus Torvalds who is heartily sick of it. And as he's the owner of the Linux trade mark he's sent off the manditory letter to GNU to ask them to stop it to protect the mark but hasn't gone flying into the courts.
Maybe because he isn't an American and sees a pot of gold at the other end of the lawsuit rainbow. :)
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The name thing is to get people interested in the philosophy behind the creation of gnu more than an ego thing. Though Stallman could be less of a dick about it.
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Why do I get tempted to call it GUN-ix, and get an image of the Bulletheads from Super Mario Bros.?
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If you only care about windows then you probably wouldn't know, but if you use linux....
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...you likely still wouldn't know :P
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Because Tomorrow is Another Day
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Re: Because Tomorrow is Another Day
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...wait, let me try that again
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Re: Because Tomorrow is Another Day
You might just want to look a the history of all of this and better analysis than I, or most, could give you have a look here.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120716144156998
PJ isn't often wrong about the things surrounding cases even if her predictions aren't 100%. They're somewhere in the 80% range which is a whole lot better than either you or I could do.
Unless, of course, you're a SCO/Microsoft fanboi and you're still as mad as Microsoft is that their attack dog SCO spent all that money of theirs and still managed to lose. And lose badly at that.
At a guess, I'd say Novell will probably do very well on appeal. As they should.
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That's a bit revisionist. The SCO Group filed its lawsuit against IBM (originally in Utah state court) in March 2003.
The SCO Group later filed its lawsuit against Novell in January 2004.
You know where to look to find the original court filings.
Now if you want to talk about the behind-the-scenes stuff that went on in fall 2002. That is, the stuff we didn't find out until it came out court later... well, The SCO Group (actually still Caldera at that point), their CEO, Mr McBride originally wanted Novell to help them out with their IBM shakedown. Novell resisted.
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Kinda pointless Novell winning anything when they're just a corpse reaching their skeletal fingers grasping from the soil of their grave, unwilling to pass onward....
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Finally, Novell will appeal this, and this is the second time this judge has tried to dismiss this lawsuit. The judge got overruled on appeal the first time.
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I'm sure there's a reasoning here...
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Re: I'm sure there's a reasoning here...
True, Novell doesn't have market share and is on the decline, due to many bad decisions, but they still have a decent product line and are much less expensive than Microsoft software.
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Re: Re: I'm sure there's a reasoning here...
As you say Netware runs natively on Linux as well so the dirty little secret which isn't so secret, is that Windows servers down the line just accept that what they're getting is coming from Exchange, a major dogs breakfast, or from Active Directory or what.
The end users can't tell the difference either.
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Re: I'm sure there's a reasoning here...
For those who are unfamiliar, here is a little history: The lawsuit pertains to the fact that Microsoft made last second changes to Windows 95 just before its release. The consequence was a delay of months before Wordperfect was usable on Win95. Novell alleges this was an intentional strategy to dislodge Wordperfect from its perch as the number 1 selling word processor at the time. Microsoft of course claims there was no strategy involved, but rather the engineers coding Wordperfect were simply inept. In the aftermath of this disastrously slow transition of Wordperfect from DOS to Windows, Novell sold Wordperfect to Corel who has owned it ever since.
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Re: Re: I'm sure there's a reasoning here...
Now, either WordPerfect had an exploit in it because of the old code, or they really did only block Novell's Word Perfect from Windows 95. Which of those sound more believable?
Honestly I think it was Novell whining that the sudden change came along. Never mind whatever potentially fatal flaw that would have effected millions of consumers, Microsoft "did it on purpose".
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Certs
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That's why it is more correctly called GNU/Linux.
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finally dismissed... really?
The deadlocked Jury was deadlocked 11-1 in favor of Novell. That doesn't quite sound like a "victory" for Microsoft. And it wasn't even hung on the point whether Microsoft is guilty.
This judges decision has also once before been overturned by an appeals court. The chances for an appeal going through are rightly good.
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Re: finally dismissed... really?
Those are the reports given by Novell to the press. It was actually 12 to 1 in favor of Microsoft.
Now let me explain why it's considdered a mis-trial: A jury decision in an antitrust situation in the US must be Unanimous. Even if it was what Novell told reporters (11-1) in their favor, there would still be a deadlock. Now since 3 days of deliberation has occurred (which is the MAXIMUM ammount of time for deliberation by law as the jury gets most of its information and facts from testimony), the judge has the right to make his own decision. This isn't a murder case so the judge can override the jury vote unless it is unanimous.
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Amazing!
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Exist they do!
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Novel vs Microsoft case
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What a farce
I was running a resume service and, for conversion purposes, tried to install WordStar and WordPerfect on my computer numerous times. You could not launch those problems if MS Word was open. Period.
For this alone Microsoft's corporate charter should have been pulled, yet all these years later they're still beating up their victim in court.
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