Just in case you don't accept the veracity of the Halloween memo, let me provide some other instances of Microsoft's open software:
1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen use time on Harvard’s PDP-10 to complete their BASIC interpreter, a theft of resources.
1976 Microsoft sells exclusive rights to their BASIC to MITS, and then later sues MITS to gain the ability to market to other manufacturers.
1977 Tim Patterson rewrites CP/M and calls the result QDOS. He joins Microsoft and sells QDOS to them. This becomes PC-DOS, which Microsoft sells to IBM. Gary Kildall, who owns CP/M points out to IBM and Microsoft that his original copyright statement is still in the PC-DOS code. Digital Research wins a suit against Microsoft in 1982 and wins an undisclosed amount.
1985 Apple threatens to sue Microsoft over the patents on its Mac GUI. Microsoft threatens to stop development on Word for the Mac and other software unless Apple gives Microsoft a license for certain elements of the Mac GUI.
1987 Windows 2.0 comes out and Apple sues Microsoft, but loses because of the licenses they were forced to give earlier.
1993 Wang sues Microsoft over use of its Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology incorporated into Windows. Microsoft pays Wang $90 million, calling it an “investment.”
1994 Microsoft steals Stac’s Stacker disk compression software and includes it with MS-DOS 6. Stac wins $120 million in court, but Microsoft later coerces Stac into licensing their technology on terms favorable to Microsoft.
1997 Borland sues Microsoft over deliberate code to exclude Borland products from working with Windows. Microsoft settles out of court for an undisclosed amount.
1997 Digital Research, which won the right to market DR-DOS in the suit above, sues Microsoft for unfair trade practices. Microsoft settles out of court claiming they paid $150 million, but analysts believe the true amount is $350 to $500 million.
1998 Bristol Technologies sues Microsoft over theft of intellectual property. Bristol awarded 3.7 million. Microsoft settles future suits for an undisclosed amount and a gag order.
1998 Microsoft licensed NT to AT&T, but then refused to upgrade the code provided. AT&T sued and Microsoft settled out of court for an undisclosed amount and a gag order.
1998 Spyglass licenses a browser to Microsoft, which became Internet Explorer. Microsoft agrees to pay royalties as a percentage of each sale. Microsoft starts giving IE away for free and Spyglass sues for deception. Microsoft bought out the suit for a one-time payment.
1998 Palm sues Microsoft over the naming of the Palm PC. Palm contends that the name is intended to violate the trademark of Palm’s Palm Pilot. This is a common Microsoft practice, to name a similar product as the competition and steal their sales. Microsoft caves, calling theirs the Pocket PC.
1998 Goldtouch Technologies met with Microsoft in hopes that it would license its mouse technology. Microsoft examined the Goldtouch mouse then initiated and marketed an imitation as the Intellimouse Pro. Goldtouch sued for $1 billion for patent infringement, theft of trade secrets and fraud.
1998 Blue Mountain published on-line Internet greeting cards. Microsoft set up a competing site and distributed a trial version of IE that diverted Blue Mountain cards into the trash folder instead of delivering them. Blue Mountain won an injunction against Microsoft.
1999 The US Department of Justice reported that on July 11th, 1999, “Bill Gates wrote an email directing that Microsoft redesign its software to harm competitors” who make personal digital appliances. It indicated, “a willingness to change the details of its Office applications to favor devices that run on Windows, even if doing so would disadvantage other customers who now rely on the Palm Pilot.”
1999 Eolas sought an injunction against shipments of IE and damages for violation of its patent on the browser plug-in method used. Eolas awarded $521 million in 2003.
1999 Microsoft funds the Mindcraft report which determined that Windows NT was 3.7 times as fast as Linux as a web server and 2.5 times faster as a file server. The report also claims NT is superior to Sun’s Solaris and Novell’s Netware. It is later revealed that Microsoft tuned their NT platform and deliberately mistuned the platforms of the competitors.
2001 FTC charges Microsoft with false and misleading advertising over and advertisement comparing a new Windows CE device with an older model Palm Pilot. Microsoft did not bother to mention that the Windows device was using extra cost wireless add-ons, and didn’t make clear that current model Palm Pilots come with this wireless capability built in.
2001 Syn’x Relief creates a proprietary 3D animation tool called Character in the late 1980’s. SoftImage signs a contract in 1992 to integrate Character into SoftImage 3D in exchange for royalties. In 1994 SoftImage demanded the rights to Character and Syn’x calls off the deal. Syn’x files suit against SoftImage and Microsoft, but goes bankrupt in 1996. Character’s authors pick up the suit and in 2001 win a 3 million franc judgment against Microsoft.
2001 Sun licenses Java to Microsoft with the stipulation that Microsoft’s version must be compliant with the standards. Microsoft announces an “improved” version that does not match the standards. Sun sues in 1998. In 1998 Microsoft receives an injunction requiring them to make their Java compliant or remove it entirely within 90 days. Microsoft says they agree. In 2000 Microsoft is still not following the standards and Sun renews the suit. Microsoft settles in 2001 for $20 million and agrees to accept Sun’s termination of their license agreement. Microsoft also agrees to a permanent injunction against unauthorized use of Sun’s Java Compatible trademark.
2002 Be filed an antitrust suit claiming Microsoft leveraged its Windows monopoly power to destroy Be’s ability to field a competing operating system. Microsoft’s licensing to OEMs states that if Windows is on a hard disk, no other operating system may be on that hard disk. Several OEMs agreed to include BeOS, but Microsoft reminded them that if they did, they would lose their right to distribute Windows. Be went bankrupt and sold their assets to Palm.
2002 SPX won a $62 million judgment against Microsoft for infringement on their patent to the Whiteboard feature of Netmeeting.
2002 Microsoft offers $2.3 million to the University of Waterloo, Canada on the condition that the university would teach their students Microsoft’s new C# programming language as a mandatory subject for students entering the university’s Electrical and Computer Engineering program.
2003 AOL sues Microsoft on behalf of its Netscape Navigator subsidiary. Microsoft settles for $750 million. Whether IE is better than Netscape is debatable, but IE is limited to Windows platforms, whereas Netscape works on many platforms. Another example of limiting the appeal of other systems and of Microsoft’s resistance to cross platform compatibility.
2003 Mythic software runs an on-line roleplaying game based on Norse, Authurian, and Celtic mythology. Microsoft is setting up a similar game called Mythica. Mythic asked Microsoft to change their name and Microsoft refused. Mythic has filed suit, in a case similar to the Palm PC case that Microsoft was forced to back off from.
2003 Microsoft added an “innovative improvement” to the Kerberos authentication protocol developed by MIT and distributed as open source software. The improvement was a misuse of a reserved field specifying whether an NT machine was allowed to authenticate another Kerberos system. Microsoft called the result intellectual property and threatened to sue anyone who put it in their software. MIT’s threatened suit forced Microsoft to back down.
2004 Real Networks sues Microsoft on antitrust grounds. Microsoft demanded royalties from RealNetworks for latter’s Helix Universal Server even though it contained no Microsoft code. RealNetworks is asking for $1 billion.
2004 Microsoft agreed to pay Norway’s Opera Software $12.75 million to head off a lawsuit over deliberate code to make MSN pages look bad on Opera’s web browser.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me 29 times and I can write for Tom's Hardware. Microsoft's demonstrated meaning of "open software" is everything we can steal belongs to us. Trust them if you wish, but don't expect any person who can do research to follow suit.
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