Microsoft Pays $536M to Novell 291
_mArk writes "This morning Novell announced that it had settled a potential law suit with Microsoft related to its NetWare product line. Microsoft agreed to pay $536 million to Novell, but this is not the end as there is another litigation against them pertaining to WordPerfect."
Beware the Microsoft settlements (Score:5, Insightful)
Yawn. The river flows. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't Care Who or Why (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't Care Who or Why (Score:2, Insightful)
Novell et al are firing the first shots in the patent wars, and are forcing Microsoft into this recent patenting blitz.
Everybody loses in the end. But you're happy because Microsoft has to pay out a little pocket change to a dying company that has turned to IP litigation as it's last chance for revenue.
If SCO sued MSFT instead of IBM they'd be slashdot heroes.
Re:Novell is a dead company (Score:5, Insightful)
Specifically, who do you think owns SuSE these days? It's Novell.
IMO - I think Novell has a couple of very nice products that they simply need to redeploy - a lot of the technology behind netware is actually pretty cool, but they allowed themselves to become marginalized (IOW - they sat on the laurels they built for themselves in the late80's and early '90s and it's almost put them out of business).
Once they finish this turn around, I expect them to regain some competitiveness, but getting back into "their" market is going to take some doing.
Re:Novell is a dead company (Score:1, Insightful)
Why do I say this, novell still has name recognition. Sure, they were destroyed by MS in the server arena, but they never lost face in the eyes of us Net Admins. So, as a administrator, if I had to pick a linux distro for my business I would be all over Novell/Suse.
Just my $0.02
Re:1994? Should have sued them then. (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps it's because once you've learned it, the interface style you're "glad that we have moved away from" is actually superior to most modern interfaces, at least in terms of operator efficiency. It's just the learning curve that's a bitch.
Re:1994? Should have sued them then. (Score:4, Insightful)
For regular users of the software the learning curve is worth the time. For those that just want to type a quick document but still want to be able to perform operations on the document want to do so without having to look at cryptic key combinations or find options buried in hidden menus.
Most computer users these days are "casual users" and don't care to learn more than point and click. The "power users" might be offended by the fact that they are being left out but the simple fact of the matter is that the "casual users" are the ones in the majority and the ones that the companies cater to.
Re:Sue sue sue, it's the American way! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't Care Who or Why (Score:5, Insightful)
You think this war started today? And Novell started it?
Go to the US Patent Office website and do a patent search for "Microsoft" and one for "Novell" (under the field "Assignee Name").
See who has been doing it more, and longer. I'll save you the trouble:
Microsoft: 3,520, since March 21, 1985
Novell: 243, September 24, 1990
Microsoft has Novell beat by an order of magnitude and then some. To give you some perspective, Amazon.com are famous for their patents, and they only have 41.
Microsoft is the poster boy for patenting anything and everything, and trying to use their "licensing" schemes to control and monopolize the market.
Nobody but William Gates is "forcing" Microsoft into this patent war. They are the agressors, not the victims. And they know exactly what they are doing.
Re:1994? Should have sued them then. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what they teach you in those MS Word courses at the local community college (at least thats what the good ones should teach you).
I don't know them, because I don't use Word but maybe twice a year.
With WP I had to know them, which sucked, until 5.1 came out and you could use a mouse to access pulldown menus.
That is, before WP 5.1 came out, I would actually do school reports and stuff in GEOWrite on my old C64, leaving the PC collecting dust. I'd rather wait for the screen to refresh than spend forever scanning over the template to look for the "italics" hotkey.
Re:Business practice (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, what happened is that when Microsoft came out with Windows they refused to give the WordPerfect programmers access to the Windows GUI APIs. This prevented them from making a version of Word Perfect that would run in a window instead of through MS-DOS. Microsoft released their MS-WORD with Windows support and became the market leader because no one wanted to stick with a DOS only aplication. It wasn't until later when MS-WORD was the leader that they finally let the WP Programers have access to the APIs. That is why they have a case against Microsoft.
Re:1994? Should have sued them then. (Score:3, Insightful)
I've generally had concurrent versions of of both Word and WP (in both their DOS and Wincarnations), installed side by side. Word is easier for very simple documents, but if you need anything more complex than an office memo, Word rapidly falls behind WP; conversely WP can handle anything up through real typesetting jobs. But WP isn't really designed for novice users. (Which I'd think would make it MORE attractive to a linux-oriented crowd, not less.
Re:So Novell is going to let the EU case die? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
At the time, the statement from WPCorp boiled down to "Windows is a flash in the pan and we hate it anyway, so we're not doing it". But one does have to wonder how much of that was sour grapes.
And it certainly does explain why early WPWin versions were pretty poor and not real stable -- they were literally groping in the dark.
But WP's demise started before Windows became ubiquitous and long before Word ever got a market foothold -- it began when WPCorp ceased offering free tech support to one and all, back in early 1994. They'd previously even supported pirated copies, and had a large steady market of upgraders from that (happy pirates frequently *buy* the next version, and WP's support made 'em deleriously happy).
Of course, with the state of tech support now, it kinda looks like WPCorp was precocious
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So Novell is going to let the EU case die? (Score:4, Insightful)
In btw, Americans have most likely missed this one around the election, but the "powerless" EU parliament managed to torpedo a well-known mafia puppet (The Lituanian candidate) along with a Catolic Bush clone (Italy). While I am not sure that the replacements are much better, this is still a reason for some selebration.
Re:You realize what this means for Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost half a billion dollars seems like a lot of money, but compare that to the loss of customers: at one time, NetWare *was* 70% of all business networks (not the internet, obviously).
So what is that $536 Million? Something like 20 cents on the dollar?
Not that they could have gotten any more. I'm just saying, it is kind of like discounted severance pay: nice to have, but continued income would be better.
Virii and lawsuits. (Score:3, Insightful)
Does the same logic hold true for all their lawsuits? Are they so popular that they are natural targets for lawsuits? Either yes, they are, and all the companies that sue them are on the same ethical level as virus writers, or no, and they really are a company that deserves to be sued over and over again.
Funny thing though: they keep getting sued and losing. That puts all the companies that sue them on the moral high ground. Why aren't they getting all the business instead of the shaft? Here we have Microsoft with a nice long queue of lawsuits always waiting for trial and they will lose many if not most of them. So why do people keep doing business with them? Why are they allowed to do business? I thought governments were supposed to protect people from this sort of thing.
This is why I like Open Source. It's a fully functional socialist movement (because it's opt-in) and it actually has the power to stop such bad behavior. Microsoft as a company has such incredible profit margins I can only compare them to Middle-Eastern oil interests and diamond cartels. Bully for them that they're the only public company in the lot, but the rate at which they get sued casts a pretty dark shadow on that. You can't very well produce hydrocarbon and carbon out of thin air, but you certainly can with software and that's just what F/OSS is doing.