Symantec Sues Microsoft, May Delay Vista 303
AuMatar writes "Symantec filed a lawsuit against Microsoft over patents on the volume management technology in Vista. They're seeking an injunction to stop Vista from being sold until the suit is completed. Given the recent Supreme Court ruling it should be interesting to see if the injunction is granted, since Symantec does produce software which uses the patent. If it is granted, expect MS to settle to prevent another Vista delay."
Interesting ploy (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
3DRealms, not id. Way to botch a lame joke.
Not so fast on that injunction... (Score:3, Interesting)
The recent Supreme Court decision has (almost) put an end to injunctions. Since the damages in patent cases are restricted to "actual" (meaning lost business profit) damages, it is hardly worth the bother.
Expect to see patent holders pretty much ignored by all large companies, from now on.
I disagree.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interesting ploy (Score:5, Interesting)
b. they've got no chance in hell of finishing vista-compatible products in time, so they need another delay
c. they actually have a case.
Re:M$ .... start thinking more about security (Score:2, Interesting)
You are missing the point that if they could do security, they would. They're not making horrid software on purpose -- this really is the best they can do. It's sad, really. There are ten new viruses a day. Millions of zombie bots wreak havoc on the internet. Botmaster spamkings brazenly demand ransom and shut down opponents with traffic storms. Absolutely no other OS from any source provides a fertile ground for this menace to grow. The only possible cure for this absurdity would be to ban Microsoft products entirely.
If Microsoft products were not so easily exploited (or were banned from the 'net), the Internet would be a much more pleasant place for the common person.
So no, they're not able to make secure software for the purpose of putting Symantec out of business. If I had points today I would have modded you funny.
Whenever they ship XP SP3 (Vista) it will have inadequate security. The first security hole in IE is going to be a raging vector for spyware because the default firewall config doesn't block outbound connections. Naturally if spyware doesn't have to overcome a firewall to deliver its reports that's helpful to whom?
I'm in the trade, so dealing with this stuff is my bread and butter -- I've installed more of their product than anybody I know, but really this is truly pathetic. It saddens me to know that my fellow humans reason so poorly as to keep this vendor a monopoly.
Re:Interesting ploy (Score:4, Interesting)
E. all of the above.
Sick of Lawsuits? (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I the only person sick to death of all the lawsuits and patents?
It seems like the world is getting more and more "locked down".
There is less and less anyone can do without knowingly or unknowlingly trampling someone else's IP.
To make matters worse there are Patent Trolls, locking up broad patents with the hopes of suing people to make money.
Those who can't sue.
All this has lead me to question the presumptions behind both copyrights and patents.
They were originally designed to spur innovation by protecting the people who invest their time and resources to research and develop new products or create original content.
It *SEEMS* to me that both are now acheiving the oppsite goal and limiting and hurting innovation.
While I don't think we can just get rid of either overnight, I think some careful consideration needs to go into reforming the laws to make sure that they serve their original purposes.
Just some thoughts that this discussion brought up for me...Cheers.
Re:Not so fast on that injunction... (Score:2, Interesting)
Damages could be based on a projected loss of existing market share suffered by Symantec as a result of a competing, infringing product. The Supreme Court did NOT rule against injunctions (which can be imposed prior to the outcome of a trial). The Supreme Court ruled only that damages must be considered in the decision to grant an injunction. The decision makes it harder for intellectual property holding companies (i.e. "patent trolls") that produce nothing and generate no revenue from anything other than litigation settlements to be granted injunctions against existing companies.
Re:DRM + Anti-piracy = improving? (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at it this way, vista will catch up to apple and KDE/Gnome. That means apple, kde and gnome will have to innovate and get ahead again. It creates competition which benefits everyone. We get 5 years of new features before Microsoft customers and they get 5 years worth of ideas every 5 years. Plus aren't we all running out of new ways to hate XP? The jokes aren't funny anymore.
Besides, if you were to ask me about OS reliability today i'd tell you i've personally had better luck with Windows XP and Windows 2000 than any linux install i've ever had or Mac OS 10.2/10.4. Of course i tend to use redhat with ext* or reiser file systems too. Mac OS 10.3, FreeBSD and Solaris have all been more reliable than Windows though. Only hardware failures have killed them. That's just my experience and anything from the 9x tree i'd consider to be less reliable than any version of linux i've ever used including redhat 5. Ok, i take that back.. if the power doesn't go out, linux on 2.4 or 2.6 is more reliable than mac os 10.4.
Re:Delayed?? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's nice to be able to say I told you so, even if (Score:3, Interesting)
your point "d" (Score:5, Interesting)
-They're going to offer an antivirus (in addition to their existing spyware removal software), making the use of SAV/NAV/NIS and such junk mostly pointless. [Not counting that most people seem to be moving to other AV apps lately like AVG and such - especially since NAV is getting harder to crack]
-They're including a basic firewall out of the box (not the best, but NIS is crap, that'd be like downgrading, if someone wants a better firewall, they'll get something that's actually better)
-Starting with Vista, they're replacing deployment tools, i.e. replacing RIS for WDS, but the interesting point here is XImage, which will likely replace ghost - the only symantec app that wasn't *total* crap yet (although lots of people have moved to/prefer acronis apps instead).
What's left? Winfax? Nope. Already a basic fax client in windows (it sucks, but I can't say winfax is great either, and most people/businesses that still use faxes nowadays don't do it via PC either). Doubt they sell many licenses.
Oh, PCAnywhere! Well, terminal services/citrix ICA is what everyone and their dog seems to be using these days (and apps like VNC/radmin). I haven't seen someone using it in a LONG time - definitely NOT mainstream either.
What else? Partition magic? Bleh. Those who wanted it bought it while it was Powerquest's - and it doesn't even seem to be updated anymore (symantec's specialty seems to be driving products into the ground - like novell seemingly). Buggier than ever, sounds like everyone prefers acronis apps for this nowadays.
The only thing they seem to have left that's worth buying is their new acquisition, veritas products. But I'm sure they'll manage to make them suck too, and drive them into the ground like everything else.
It seems they're not improving anything, they'd be the LEAST innovative company I could think of, and their junk just keeps getting worse.
Perhaps Veritas licenses alone can't keep the company afloat (unsurprisingly), and they're looking for a ne business model ala SCO (litigation, to prevent a new/better/more secure OS, or plain extorsion)
I'm sad to see many companies and products having been crushed by Microsoft over the years (OS/2, Corel stuff, you name it), but if there's one company I won't miss, it definitely is Symantec.
The enemy of your enemy not withstanding... (Score:3, Interesting)
"We shouldn't have to buy 3rd party software to be able to use Windows! That just ain't right."
So they step up, granted they sure shuffled there feet getting there.
"M$ is steamrolling 3rd party software that we bitched about having to buy in the first place! That just ain't right."
I'd say Microsoft just can't win no matter what they do, but the opposite seems to be more the case in reality.
As for Symantec "talking" with Microsoft, what do they really have to say? "Hey Microsoft, please don't make your product better because we want to continue to profit off picking up the slack." That'd kinda be like the oil companies saying, "Hey car companies, please don't make your cars more fuel efficient because we want to continue...
oh nevermind
Re:Come on, guys! It has NOTHING to do with viruse (Score:3, Interesting)
Technically, you may be right. Practically though, it'd be very difficult fo Symantec to challenge MS' anti-virus offering and succeed on merit. Many big-time legal battles are fought to achieve something other than stated in the suit... SCO vs IBM being a prime example.
Symantec would love it if MS continued to remain their biggest source of revenue. And for that, MS has to keep releasing virus-prone OSes forever. With MS changing tack with Vista, Symantec would definintely look to collect as much as possible, before going down.
Re:Come on, guys! It has NOTHING to do with viruse (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yay! Volume manager! (Score:1, Interesting)
remember shiva? (Score:3, Interesting)
MS then distributed IE for free and never paid a penny to them.
i remember that MS recently did lose a lawsuit for this, but the damage was done
Re:By the time Vista comes out... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is particularly vital for so-called high availability and extremely large architecture systems for which companies pay a lot of money: it takes time to work out all the bugs in complex failover systems. The results are often unfortunate: basic system and debugging tools and especially security patches are not available for those systems. I'm afraid that XP and 2003 are going to be considered "good enough" for a long time, and if it's not, the open-source 64-bit operating systems will have gained quite a lot more market share.
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)
In sports results, "DNF" means "did not finish". Coincidence? I think not.
(if this is a well known fact, i'll rephrase that to "coincidence? I don't think")
Dude... (Score:4, Interesting)
... you are seriously forgetting about the most used symantec product in the corporate environment. Symantec Corporate Anti-virus. We use it, every company I support uses it (lots of companies). One client has over 7,000 machines running the client end of it, meanwhile there's all the domain controllers running the server end as well. Licenses... cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching! Unlike their comsumer level Norton AV, Symantec Corporate AV, in my experience, actually does it's job without being intrusive, AND it's nowhere near the resource hog that Norton AV is.
Ghost isn't as big as it used to be, and the rest is junk as you mentioned. I just needed to add in the corporate AV... it's their one decent product. If Symantec goes under, I won't miss all the other products, but the corporate AV would be missed.
Why they are suing microsoft. (Score:2, Interesting)
Vista is starting to have the workings of anti-malware/security right? (or its supposed to) and thats not a bad thing from the users perspective.
However, this is a bad thing for Symantec. Like the integrated browser "solving" the browser war, Vistas integrated features may make many portions of Symantec's software redundant. Yes, we want Windows to have some security, backup, spyware detections etc, (and even a virus scanner would be nice) but that would hurt companies who specialize in this! And, unfortuneate for semantic windows Vista will be the only OS of the near futre that would need a security/backup suite (ok maybe a few macs)
I think Symantec senses a possible "end is near" and is moving to head it off. Yes, i would like free builtin security tools but at what cost? Thousands of offshore outsourced jobs could be lost!