Crocodiles Eat
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| grouch May 20, 2006 11:45 PM EDT |
"Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured." -- Winston Churchill http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3... Microsoft "negotiated" with Stac in 1991. They didn't like the way Stac negotiated, so they used Stac's software anyway by 1993. http://www.vaxxine.com/lawyers/articles/stac.html Microsoft "negotiated" with Syn'x, also in the early '90s. They didn't like the terms, so they "pirated" the software and bankrupted Syn'x. http://www.infosatellite.com/news/2001/12/h081201microsoft_s... Microsoft "negotiated" with Spyglass, agreed to pay royalties, gave away the browser and killed Spyglass. http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/eric/Eric_Weblog.h... Microsoft "negotiated" with Bristol, then 'engaged in "wanton, reckless" and deceptive business practices'. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-523518.html?legacy=zdnn Microsoft "negotiated" with AT&T, refused to license, used AT&T's software anyway. http://www.thestandard.com/article.php?story=200403081710226... Microsoft "negotiated" with Sun over Java, then simply ignored the license. At least twice. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1862986.stm Microsoft "negotiated" with IBM, several times, then simply ignored the negotiations to enshrine the monopoly. http://reactor-core.org/in-microsoft-we-trust.html With that history, which is a drop in the bucket compared to what's publicly available ( http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107... for example), it's a little hard to keep skepticism at bay when reading: >"Microsoft responded: "We worked hard to resolve these issues with Symantec, but were not able to reach an agreement." Why would any company or individual negotiate with Microsoft? [edit:] I just took another look at the Groklaw page linked above and see that it is missing cases beginning with the letters K, Q, X, Y, and Z. If anyone knows of such cases, please help fill in the alphabet soup of litigation on that page. |
| jimf May 21, 2006 1:13 AM EDT |
Symantec has been more or less MS's boy for AV support. Now that MS has decided to do their own AV, it's pretty obvious that they want to 'negotiate' Symantec out of the picture altogether. |
| dinotrac May 21, 2006 3:32 AM EDT |
Stac's inclusion in your list is a bit ironic, because Stac made out pretty well. They won a nice big judgement and they won it at a time when hard drives were just starting to get huge. They had a great product in the days of 100mb hard drives. Not so great now. Microsoft intended no favors, but ended up doing one anyway. |
| grouch May 21, 2006 12:27 PM EDT |
jimf: Yes, it's the same old pattern. It's nice of Microsoft to remain so utterly predictable. dinotrac: Stac made out ok, but only because they could afford to bring suit and because Microsoft at the time couldn't afford to simply bankrupt any opponent in and out of court. Their annual revenue at that time would be about 1 hour of revenue now, considering they make roughly $1,000 per second today. |
| dinotrac May 21, 2006 1:16 PM EDT |
grouch: a: You're talking mid 90s. If Microsoft was not yet an 800 lb gorilla, they were certainly 600 lb, and making money out the wazoo. The problem is that Stac had a case and enough money to pursue it. You seem to have a distorted concept of federal courts. It certainly is true that corporate lawsuits are expensive. It's also true that more money is an advantage. However, federal judges tend to be rather ruthless case managers, putting a crimp on the degree to which endless piles of money can distort the process. |
| grouch May 21, 2006 2:09 PM EDT |
dinotrac: >"You seem to have a distorted concept of federal courts. It certainly is true that corporate lawsuits are expensive. It's also true that more money is an advantage. However, federal judges tend to be rather ruthless case managers, putting a crimp on the degree to which endless piles of money can distort the process." I don't have a distorted concept of federal courts. It's a crap shoot with a large entry fee. If you insert "some" in front of your "federal judges tend to be", I would agree. Microsoft has used their endless piles of money to squash, quash and intimidate would-be competitors and those who have something Microsoft wants since getting into a position to receive those piles. Note that even Sun and IBM eventually gave up on relief via the courts. |
| dinotrac May 21, 2006 3:32 PM EDT |
Sun and IBM eventually gave up on relief via the courts? Not sure what you're talking about. Care to enlighten me? I thought Sun reached a very rewarding settlement with Microsoft. That's actually the norm in civil litigation. Something like 95% of all cases never reach trial. In fact, the whole process is geared to encourage settlements...there are nearly enough courtrooms or judges to actually try all of the cases filed in any given year. I'm sure, however, that there is no shortage of lawyers. |
| grouch May 21, 2006 3:52 PM EDT |
dinotrac: You're right, re: Sun and the norm in civil litigation. It was still an example of MS negotiating, violating the terms they negotiated, then waiting for the injured party to take them to court. It's an expensive process that few can afford to go through. Regarding IBM, I'm thinking of the OS/2 contracts with Microsoft. IBM was given the choice of forgetting about the breach of contract and dumping OS/2 or paying such a high license fee for pre-loaded MS Windows that they would be shut out of the PC market. It was another case of Microsoft telling an OEM to do as they were told or they can go play in the other 5% of the market. Few businesses can withstand losing 95% of their sales. |
| dinotrac May 21, 2006 4:01 PM EDT |
grouch: Now I understand. I didn't think there was a court case. If I remember the history, IBM told Microsoft to shove it and ate higher licensing fees on Windows. IBM support OS/2 for years after Microsoft tried to bully them out of the market. Reality finally caught up with them -- not the first time a great product lost out to inferior but more popular competition. Of course, IBM is having the last laugh. IBM's embrace of Linux is one of the biggest reasons why Microsoft's grand plan to own the glass house has failed. |
| jimf May 26, 2006 12:14 PM EDT |
Just ran across this one http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/05/25/... Strange that it should come up at this time.... Or just the Crocodile got hungry again. |
| grouch May 27, 2006 5:58 AM EDT |
jimf: Whee! That should make every MS Windows user feel really safe. Nothing amazes me in that bizarro world any more. Firewalls that let the unknown vandal disable them while hiding the fact from the computer user, javascript that can erase a hard drive, pictures and links that can "infect", auto-installing music wizards that hide attackers while preventing legal playing of music, and now anti-virus that acts as a root-kit. The most bizarre aspects of all are that people pay for this stuff AND then dare to claim that GNU+Linux is "not ready" to replace anything that utterly, abominably rotten. |
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