08.20.08
Microsoft’s Darkest Crimes Remain Undiscovered, Unavailable
“[Bill Gates] is divisive. He is manipulative. He is a user. He has taken much from me and the industry.”
–Gary Kildall
An extensive list of Microsoft offenses is something that we already have, but it does not go very far back. One reader brought this oldie to our attention, adding: “Here’s an item that I considered to be one of the key aspects of the Microsoft-SCO cooperation.”
The Caldera antitrust lawsuit included some of the most damning evidence of Microsoft misconduct; breakware, black propaganda, all was there, the potential embarrassment being such that there was good reason for Microsoft to settle, then try to pretend it never happened. Now, however, maybe it didn’t ever happen - because the evidence is being pulped.
AP reports that the 937 boxes of court-ordered documents, which have been in store since the lawsuit, are currently being destroyed at the behest of SCO, their owner and - surely coincidentally - Microsoft’s new friend. Some 40 boxes have been temporarily hijacked by Sun, which is busily scanning them for use in its own antitrust suit, but after it’s done so they’ll be off for pulping too.
“The rest is a pump-and-dump scheme repurposed for FUD,” he says
The same reader has also warned us that stuff like this keeps popping up in people’s faces: “Microsoft Corp.’s unlikely alliance with Linux software vendor Novell Inc.” This was covered some moments ago, but it’s outweighed by articles from unsuspecting journalists, who continue to just parrot Microsoft and Novell. The Register is a bit of an exception because it says: “Novell doesn’t mind, though. In fact it thinks selling its soul to Steve Ballmer was a tremendous idea.”
Our reader adds: “I suppose the goal is to repeat the myth enough times that people start to believe it. Bill really got his panties in a twist over Novell in 1988 when DR-DOS 5, as well as years before that.
“So, where have these journalists been the last 20 years that they haven’t noticed that Bill Gates has been gunning for Novell since the 1980’s.
“And from 1988 found in Case No. 2:96CV645B, in Caldera’s finding of facts [PDF]:
“You never sent me a response on the question of what
things an app would do that would make it run with MSDOS
and not run DR-DOS. Is there any version check or api
they fail to have? Is ther feature they have that might
get in our way? I am not looking for something they cant
get around. I am looking for something their current
binary fails on.”
Bill Gates, September 22, 1988
There’s a lot more here and here. There’s more about Gary Kildall’s legacy in this page. For background there’s also Wikipedia.
Gary Arlen Kildall (May 19, 1942 – July 11, 1994) was an American computer scientist and microcomputer entrepreneur who created the CP/M operating system and founded Digital Research, Inc. (DRI). Kildall was one of the first people to see microprocessors as fully capable computers rather than equipment controllers and to organize a company around this concept.[1] He also co-hosted the PBS TV show The Computer Chronicles. Although his career in computing spanned more than two decades, he is mainly remembered in connection with IBM’s unsuccessful attempt in 1980 to license CP/M for the IBM PC.
“And then,” says our reader, there’s this.
He continues: “Just for the record, QDOS which became MS-DOS when Bill later bought it, was a clone of CP/M and by version 4 sucked so badly that competitors like DR-DOS hopped over 4 in their own versioning to avoid being associated with MS-DOS 4. The market that Gates wanted was dominated by DR-DOS with graphical shells Desqview and GEM. On technical merits, MS-DOS under Windows 2,3,95,and 98 could not compete.” █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
Yuhong Bao said,
November 6, 2008 at 6:23 pm
“Just for the record, QDOS which became MS-DOS when Bill later bought it, was a clone of CP/M”
In the first version, and then it diverged from CP/M.
“by version 4 sucked so badly that competitors like DR-DOS hopped over 4 in their own versioning to avoid being associated with MS-DOS 4.”
I know about thi.
Yep, don’t forget how MS got it’s monopoly in the first place. If CP/M-86 existed in 1979-1980, QDOS would not have ever existed. Likewise, if IBM was able to successfully licence CP/M-86, IBM would not have asked MS for an OS.