Microsoft Pays $536M to Novell

_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."

So Novell is going to let the EU case die?

[Sikmaz]

"Finally, Novell has agreed to withdraw its intervention in the European Commission's case with Microsoft."

Sue sue sue, it's the American way!

[Anonymous Coward]

All these whiny dinosaur software companies need to quit blaming Microsoft for their lack of success and come up with something innovative on their own. WordPerfect became the market leader, then they got all fat and lazy, providing the opportunity for Microsoft to come along and eat their lunch with just a few new features that the folks at WordPerfect were too lazy to implement.

Novell should have moved into the operating systems market long ago, since NetWare basically existed just to make up for the Windows networking components being shitty at the time. Once Microsoft figured out how networks operate, there was no more need for Novell NetWare.

Well, you know what they say. Those that can't innovate litigate.

Hopefully

[BlackEyedSceva]

I would like to see Novell overpower Microsoft more often. From the looks of Novell's new linux product lineup, it appears they may be a major competitor against microsoft in the future.

WordPerfect

[clinko]

WordPerfect... The OTHER Monopoly. Several Law, Insurance, & State departments are still forced to use WordPerfect because they archived in WPDs.

I really don't feel for WordPerfect's side on that suit.

Chris Stone?

[wcdw]

So is *this* the reason that Chris left Novell on Friday?

http://www.theboyz.biz/ [theboyz.biz]Your source for hardware, software, video games, small appliances, electronics and more!

Shouldn't this be posted AC...

[Anonymous Coward]

... to prevent obvious karma whoring?

Round and round...

[tod_miller]

Someone make a nice chart with who paid who what...

I have a snakeing suspiscion that the IT world, for all thier intelligence and success, are being played by sleeping agents of lawyers who deliberately steer companies to collide, and the resultant lawsuites just move money around, while the lawyers skim the cheddar off the top...

So, to draw sides:

Novell, Sun, IBM, AMD

versus

Microsoft, SCO, Intel and... erm...

Man this hurts my head, who to trust...

I noticed Novell came from nowhere (IMHO) recently exposurewise, they really built themselves up as a player (IMHO) and this linux offering is becoming the dotCom tradition now, make a any company, and you have to have your own distro! (Yeah yeah I know about novell and unix)

Maybe one day Microsoft will have thier own linux distro...

Oh, I forgot, they are buying licenses off SCO, and rewriting gnu code into longhorn (true!)

Well done those guys.

Now who hates kodak?

Re:Beware the Microsoft settlements

[Ohreally_factor]

Microsoft settles with Novell. Result: We don't know yet, but I'm expecting something ugly. Maybe some bizarre legal cross-licensing to prevent non-commercial software from existing?

And let's not forget the recent resignation of Chris Stone [slashdot.org] from Novell. Maybe it's just a coincidence.

Re:Here's hoping...

[stratjakt]

Here's hoping Novell loses big, and no judge is stupid enough to think that a word processor (one of the first functions PCs were designed to be able to do) is a market you can hijack with patents.

Word had a sensible GUI, WP stuck with cryptic keyboard shortcuts. WP lost on the usability front. They once had a monopoly on word processing, just like Netscape once had a virtual monopoly on browsers. And they both lost it by never adapting their sucktastic products.

Re:Round and round...

[I confirm I'm not a]

they [Microsoft] are buying licenses off SCO, and rewriting gnu code into longhorn (true!)

Much as I'd love to believe that, it'd (a) be against the terms of the GPL, and (b) if/when they were caught - they'd be so badly screwed it wouldn't be funny[1]. And they'd be caught just as soon as they refused to pay an employee a raise. So - got any proof?

[1] Oh, alright. It would be funny. Very.

Strategy on Microsofts part to legitimize lawsuits

[3770]

Is it a strategy on Microsofts part to legitimize software related lawsuits?

They have really deep pockets. They can afford to pay. When the pay they achieve two things:

1) They can stop worrying about the lawsuit and continue with their business.
2) They also legitimize the claim of the other company, in this case Novell, thereby setting a precedent.

When Microsoft sets a precedent it means that the next company that Sun or Novell or SCO sues will almost certainly have to pay. There is a precedent after all. But that company might not be able to pay. And then Microsoft has one competitor less.

Re:Novell is a dead company

[Zorilla]

Looking at Novell's product line, they seem to be a dead company... or a totally restructured one from the past...

Better check and be sure first:

www.netcraft.com [netcraft.com]

Re:Beware the Microsoft settlements

[Anonymous Coward]

My take on Chris Stone is that he had a falling out with Waltham in September when he was 'sent' to harvard business school. His 'resignation was just a formalization of Messmen et al. giving him the axe

Re:So Novell is going to let the EU case die?

[bfree]

Personally I cannot believe this is legal. EU takes a case V MS and MS can pay off the prosecution witnesses. Is this not in itself evidence that it is an dominent abusive monopoly which will run wild without legal restraints, the exact thing "anti-trust" laws are for. Imagine you were a witness in a blackmail trial and you were called into an appeal, when asked to give evidence you say "sorry, but I made a deal with the defendant for loads of cash to not say anything so I'm withdrawing my statement". End result, you should presumably be tried to perverting the course of justice and/or the defendant tried for witness intimidation. For a business isn't the ultimate intimidation "if you don't do what we want we won't give you buckets of cash"?

Re:No,

[paesano]

I think you'll see that NetWare pre-dated LanMan, which, by Novell Engineers, was often referred to as "LandFill." Novell created the market (very innovative). Banyan innovated with their Directory component. Novell improved on the Directory (a huge gamble and innovation). Microsoft just kept trying to catch up. Eventually they had an inferior product that worked just well enough to compete. Then the FUD and marketing took over. The rest is history (notice the absolute lack of techincal innovation).

Re:WordPerfect (and Oo.org)

[gosand]

Also, there is no such thing as WPD lock-in. WPD is one of the nicer formats out there, and if you've looked at Abiword or talked to the WP OO.o developers, you'll know that it's a lot easier to work with than .DOC. The WP format hasn't changed much since WP6.1, and opening up a WP6.1 files on Corel WP 12 is pretty slick. Try opening a complex Word document from even one version ago. Yeah, right. You'll be reformatting for hours. WP stays pretty standard on their format.

This brings up a question I have had - how come I can open up Word documents in OpenOffice, but not WordPerfect documents? OpenOffice has conversion tools built-in for many formats, but not WP.

Re:WordPerfect

[Reziac]

And "monopoly" would imply *lack* of choice. People used WP by choice back then even more than now -- in WP's heyday, WP had direct competition from Wordstar, MultiMate, and numerous other word processors of varying capability. WP cornered what was then a very competitive market because of several factors:

1) support for every printer known to man
2) features that users wanted (notably, features for lawyers, which no other product bothered to include)
3) excellent free tech support for one and all (legal user or not)
4) Reveal Codes (the ultimate timesaver for complex documents)

WP only lost the market lead by being slow and lame to the Windows bandwagon, and I think more critical, by radically reducing their free tech support.

Until WPWin8, where WP got its Windows act back together, WinWord was prettier to look at, but Word has *never* been superior in any way, and as you say about file formats -- lordy!!

BTW, tho I have (and use, and collect) most WP versions, I still use WP5.1 as my everyday workhorse, and I lurk on the WP OO.o mailing list. :)

Possible Bribe?

[freaksta]

Finally, Novell has agreed to withdraw its intervention in the European Commission's case with Microsoft.

What ever happened to....

[Leto-II]

Novell's lawsuits regarding DR-DOS?

Re:Don't Care Who or Why

[coolsva]

Not to troll, but what 'innovations' can we honestly think of coming from the Novell camp in the past decade, apart from Netware?
Wordperfect lost out to Word due to one plain and simple reason, GUI version. I still remember back in early 90s when people were still sticking to simple text mode WP without WYSIWYG v/s the appeal of word for windows. That plus the fact that word did try to help migration by providing same/simillar keystrokes, templates, conversion etc.

Also, microsoft has to patent their ideas lest someone else patents it and holds it for a ransom (we all remember the lawsuit on plugins) once it becomes commonplace.

Re:1994? Should have sued them then.

[ValourX]

WordPerfect is superior to Word in the same ways that Mozilla is superior to Internet Explorer. More relevant and modern features, greater stability, tabbed document views, better writing tools and extensions, export to PDF functionality, legacy compatibility modes (WP12 can be made to look and feel exactly like WP51/DOS). WP also has legal-specific functions that make it the standard among judges and lawyers.

It's also cheaper individually, and bigger businesses can do volume licensing deals with Corel.

WP is hands down a better product than Word. This is coming from a professional writer who has used both programs since their first versions. I'd use WP all day if I could, but WP for Linux kind of sucks, and I have this thing about not using proprietary software if a free alternative is available.

-Jem

More Mac viruses?

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

This is really off-topic, but was there really a time when there were more Macintosh viruses than DOS/Windows ones?

AFAIK, the first viruses were spotted in 85-86 and they were on dos. The first 2-3 years were pretty quiet (well, there was the Robert Morris internet worm).
Then in the beginning of the 90s or so there were Brain, the Jerusalem-family, Michelangelo, and most notably the first kits, Dark Avenger and VCL. All for DOS/Windows. According to my memory, at this time viruses were already 'Microsoft country'.

So was the Mac virus hegemony between these periods, or does one of us have a memory fault?

Sure, it just couldn't be that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Word has NEVER had the legal features that serious lawyers still need, which is why WordPerfect became so entrenched there.

Sure Bill Gates father was still using WordPerfect quite long into the game.

Blows a hole in your theory about WordPerfect dying because it sucked.

Word has always sucked, especially in a legal environment, but the war was never about a good implementation of features, but about control and forcing all industries to the same stupidity.

I had this conversation just a few days ago with lawyers who had current versions of Word which they knew how to use and have used for a long time, but still went back to WordPerfect to get many important things done. Word never properly understood, for example, a table of authorities, ir if it did, kept it a big secret.

OS/2

[michaelmalak]

I had heard or read (but cannot confirm with a quick Google search) that WordPerfect did not pursue Windows early because they had been told by Microsoft that OS/2 was the Next Big Thing, while Microsoft was quietly working behind the scenes to build up Windows and Windows applications in a surprise thwarting of IBM and its OS/2.

As for poor user interface of keyboard-based WordPerfect, we have IBM to thank for that. A function-key-based user-interface was efficient in the days of "standard" keyboards when function keys were on the left. IBM came along and said that their PCs and Mainframes should have the same user interface, and moved the PC function keys across the top. This is what is called an "Enhanced" keyboard. If you've never used a "Standard" keyboard, you have no right to complain.

Even today Windows has remnants "Standard" keyboard legacy. ALT-F4 closes an application and ALT-F6 closes a child window within an application. Notice the keys are both even numbered -- that was because they were adjacent in the two-by-five arrangement of function keys on the left of a "Standard" keyboard.

Re:Actually...

[JohnFluxx]

"It wasn't until later when MS-WORD was the leader that they finally let the WP Programers have access to the APIs. "

Is this true? Very interesting if so.

The MS Word coder that started a blog said in his blog that basically this was wrong. That in MS the windows team and office team didn't even talk to each other, let alone have secret api's, and that wordperfect used this api conspiracy theory to cover up that their code sucked.