I used to cyber with King Tut on Microsoft Comic Chat.

Some of you have grandparents still using Win95. Some of your parents are still using Win95. And I bet there's at least one Farker using Win95 right now.

/farking upgrade already, you are the reason why IE6 is still relevant in web development
//well that and pirates

AntiNorm: I take it there's a reason why a statute of limitations doesn't apply here?

The suit actually began almost a decade ago IIRC

whither_apophis: step 1: write OS so competitors program doesn't work

step 2: sieze market share

step 3: claim the "free market" decided which was best

step 4: profit / get sued

/I hate Word with an undying fire of hate
//I like hate

THIS.

MS released a service pack to NT 3.51 with an undocumented system call which gave their apps a competitive performance advantage in the marketplace then tried the "aw, your product sucks -- try harder" line of BS. This is partly why IE still exists and Netscape does not. MS perfected the Fox News misinformation campaign before Fox did.

JesseL: whither_apophis: step 1: write OS so competitors program doesn't work

I didn't realize MS was under a legal obligation to maintain application forward compatibility or that they had done anything to prevent Novell from creating a version of WordPerfect compatible with the new OS.

When your application has an inside track to OS calls external competitors do not have insight or access to in a timely manner, you consider that fair competition?

Here's an analogy:

MS makes a car chassis, they also make wheels and tires for that chassis design.

External vendors have to comply with the interfaces for that chassis.

MS desides to roll out a new chassis with square hubs with 6 custom bolts to attach wheels and tires. Funny, their internal tires work fine, yours suck because they don't fit. "Try harder, oh and the custom bolts for you to work with are back-ordered. Whoops."

"Novell sued Microsoft in 2004...says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss. Novell is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group..."

WordPerfect was commercially dead when Novell bought it. Novell was commercially dead when The Attachmate Group bought it. $1.2B would ease the sting a bit. You grab what you can.

At least, that's what I'm reading into it.

susler: WordPerfect was far superior to MS Word. It had a ton of features we used all the time which MS Word didn't have and, at least one, still doesn't.

I was in it all day and remember being crushed when we found out we had to switch to MS Word.

MS Word was WordPerfect's idiot stepsister.

WP did bound publishing better. It would handle TOC, footnotes, endnotes, and indexes seamlessly. We would send proofs to editors and printers in record time. Word farked that who well-tuned and performing system.

Yeah I use Office products now because it hurts too much to fight anymore if you have to exchange documents and rely of consistent formatting. OpenOffice is a joke of a nerd circle-jerk and more unusable that the real Office suite.

De facto standards are de facto. Move on. Sadly.

whither_apophis: step 1: write OS so competitors program doesn't work

step 2: sieze market share

step 3: claim the "free market" decided which was best

step 4: profit / get sued

/I hate Word with an undying fire of hate
//I like hate

Though I like excel enough, Word is a flaming turd!

MrEricSir: How on earth could Apple possibly be a monopoly?

They are a single-source of their OS and hardware to run it on. The platform is basically a Wintel box but is locked down and closed. There is no competition for hardware or software to drive prices down. You pay a premium to use commodity hardware.

I like MS Word. Just last week I made the switch to it from OpenOffice Writer.

whither_apophis: step 1: write OS so competitors program doesn't work

step 2: sieze market share

step 3: claim the "free market" decided which was best

step 4: profit / get sued

/I hate Word with an undying fire of hate
//I like hate

I don't think step 3 happened the way you say it happened... but apart from arguing that, what specifically don't you like about MS Word? It's a solid word processor. I personally think the whole "ribbon bar" is a step in the wrong direction, but otherwise I really like it.

JesseL: Meh. Sounds like a great way to piss off your customers, but not remotely illegal.

The unwillingness to say "Fark MS" and pimp their app on other platforms is exactly what allowed MS to become a monopoly with the likes of Novell as their biatches.

No, it adversely affects the market by reducing consumer choice and adding unforecasted transition costs to customers. You're not going to walk away from a health revenue stream quietly to go to another, minority OS.

Essentially MS's response was "ok then, go build your own OS if you don't like it."

Co-mingling OS and app development for that OS is not in the consumers' best interest.