THE COURT: Everyone else may be seated. Good morning, ladies and
gentlemen. Mr. Alepin, you may take the stand and you are still under oath.
RONALD ALEPIN, recalled as a witness, having been previously duly sworn,
testified as follows:
REDIRECT EXAMINATION (CONT'D)
BY MR. LAMB:
Q. When we broke yesterday we were discussing the AARD code. And
yesterday morning Mr. Holley asked you if there was a malfunction in the
AARD code. Do you recall that question?
A. I recall a question concerning malfunctioning and the AARD code.
Q. And your response was no, there was no malfunction; right?
A. That's correct.
Q. And you testified that there wasn't a real error. It was a false
error; right?
A. That's correct.
Q. Okay. By false error, do you mean that it was not true?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, have you seen evidence in the record that leads you to believe
that Microsoft knew that the AARD code was not a true error?
A. Yes.
Q. What did you see?
A. Well, there is a discussion of -- in the record concerning what the
purpose was for the code. It was to detect a non-Microsoft operating
system, and that in and of itself is -- was not an error. And the
purpose for installing the code was not to detect errors, but to detect
a different operating system.
..
Q. What type of error message is this?
A. Well, this is an error message that conveys no real information other
than telling the user that some error condition has occurred and giving
him no basis or ability to respond or react to the error condition on
his own or to assess or evaluate the import of the error on his
operation, on his continuing use of the computer.
Q. And what's the impact of that when you receive a message like that?
Well, the impact is that you don't know what you did and it's not
readily apparent how you're going to fix the problem, so the -- you have
a lingering concern or doubt about the stability of the system,
something happened, and you don't know what it was, and you don't know
whether you're going to see something happen in the future.
But it's an unresolved issue, and you're unaware of it, so it just
undermines your confidence in the continuing use of the system.
Q. Okay. Does that raise issues of incompatibility?
A. It undermines your confidence and your use of the system, which is a
concern.
This is a new product, Microsoft Windows beta, 3.11, and there's
certainly compatibility issues that can explain what's happening here.
And, again, the information is not helpful here other -- but you're
trying to install Windows 3.1 on your system. There's a possibility of
-- strong possibility there's compatibility issue.
Q. Now, this doesn't happen on MS-DOS; right?
A. This error message does not appear when a user would be installing
the Christmas beta on MS-DOS.
Q. It only happens on DR-DOS; right?
A. It only happens on DR-DOS, I believe.
Q. Okay. And who is it created by?
A. It was created by Microsoft, Microsoft employees. Aaron Reynolds, in
particular, at the direction of Microsoft.
Q. And AARD, is that an acronym for Aaron Reynolds?
A. That's my understanding, that those were his initials.
..
Q. Okay. And then finally Mr. Mendelsohn says, recently a number of
concerns have arisen regarding Microsoft's willingness and ability to
extend such support to the new OLE controls technology.
For the reasons listed below, I believe that Microsoft application
developers have been given earlier and more detailed access to OCX
specifications than we have had here at Lotus. These are serious
concerns, and I hope that we can address them with Microsoft promptly.
Do you see that, sir?
A. I do.
Q. So Mr. Holley's reference to Mr. Kliger was suggesting that Lotus
didn't have any problems with undisclosed APIs; right?
A. As far as it went, yes.
Q. Right. As far as it went, okay.
But the rest of the story in relation to Mr. Mendelsohn, who was there
at Lotus, is he's saying he's having significant problems with
undisclosed APIs; right?
A. That's correct. That's correct.
Q. And he's complaining that he's not getting that information and that
there's not a separation of church and state?
A. That's correct.
..
What I want to do with 2456 -- this is the DRG summit talk by James
Plamondon regarding power evangelism and relationship evangelism.
..
Q. Okay. And this is the particular document where Mr. Plamondon talked
about the tactics of evangelism, and he talked about ISVs being pawns in
the struggle between platform vendors.
Do you recall that, sir?
A. Yes.
MR. LAMB: Now, if you could just highlight the last paragraph of the
first page, sir. Thank you.
Q. And who's Mr. Plamondon talking to?
A. He's talking to, as I understand it, the other members of the
developer relations group within Microsoft.
..
Sir, in your opinion, if Microsoft follows the party line as put forth
by Mr. Plamondon, is that a dissemination, a distribution of truthful
information?
A. No, not --
..
Q. And, again, can you tell the jury who Mike Maples is?
A. He's senior executive in charge of applications for Microsoft.
Q. Applications?
A. Yeah.
Q. And then it's to Brad Silverberg and some other folks. Who is Brad
Silverberg?
A. Head of the desktop operating systems group inside Microsoft.
..
Q. .. Mr. Silverberg says to Mr. Maples, I'd be glad to help tilt Lotus
into the death spiral. I could do it Friday afternoon, but not Saturday.
I could do it pretty much any time the following week. Do you see that, sir?
A. I do.
..
Q. Okay. And this is a document that was seen before, and this is a
different time frame and it's relating to a different product?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay. But this is from Bill Gates?
A. Yes.
..
MR. LAMB: And then if you can go down to the call-out where it says .. I
have decided that we should not publish these extensions. Okay. So did
you understand that Mr. Gates was telling the people in his company not
to publish the API extensions regarding Ishellbrowser?
A. That's correct.
..
MR. LAMB: If you could go to the front page, and if you could highlight
the message or blow up the message that's from Cameron Myhrvold. The
middle one right there, yes.
Q. And Mr. Myhrvold says, to answer your, quote, global question,
unquote, we unfortunately cannot hide behind the, quote, it's not an
app, it's part of the system, end quote, defense for bullet and bandit
.. We .. will be specifically tried for these interfaces.
Ideally, we should document everything the bullet and bandit themselves
use. Now, this may sound horrible, but, one, we'll document, but we, all
caps, will not encourage, and, in fact, we'll aggressively discourage
any use of these interfaces by ISVs and won't be talking about them.
And, two, remember we are not going to stick this doc into a book or
even an SDK box. It will be written up as a white paper and, quote,
inserted, end quote, into the MSDN CD-ROM containing hundreds of meg of
other tech notes.
It will be very, quote, low profile, unquote, but it will provide
enough, quote, air cover, unquote, for us to say they are documented.
..
Q. Can you explain to the jury what you believe Mr. Myhrvold is
suggesting that they do from a technological perspective?
A. .. What Mr. Myhrvold is suggesting is that the documentation for
these, for the large number of APIs that are available in the Windows
operating system and used by Microsoft applications, but are not
disclosed to the independent software vendor community, will be written
up in a document and buried in among the hundreds of megabytes of other
information in the CDs that are sent out to the developer community and
the Microsoft user community, allowing people to say that the
specifications or these interfaces are, in fact, documented.
But they'd be hard to find; right?
I think that's the idea here, yes, that they'd be hard to find.
..
Q. You were asked some questions by Mr. Holley about Slide 796, and I'm
referring specifically to SPAD. Can you explain to the jury specifically
what SPAD is again?
A. A SPAD is a feature or a function that was introduced into the
Windows operating system product around 2002, I believe, that allows
users to set program access and defaults.
Q. And does that allow you to remove the visible means of user access?
A. It -- that's its purpose. I understand it to be, yes.
Q. Okay. And does SPAD work to remove the visible means of user access
for Windows Media Player?
A. Not entirely, no.
Q. Not entirely. Does SPAD work to remove the visible means of access
for Real media player?
A. Yes.
..
Q. Does the add/remove function completely remove the Windows Media Player?
A. No, sir, it does not.
Q. Does add/remove function complete the Real media player?
A. I believe it does.
..
Q. I want to switch gears to BeOS, and there was some testimony that was
elicited about that particular operating system in relation to the dual
boot being dangerous.
And you were just asked that question, but can you explain to the jury
what that means, that the dual boot could be dangerous?
A. Well, let's see, maybe I could use the paper?
Q. Sure.
..
A. .. When most users don't have backup copies of their hard drive ..
bad things can happen in the process of moving this information here
into this area up here which we're going to reconfigure for Windows only.
If you make a mistake during the process of installing the second
operating system .. then you're playing with your own data, with your
real data. So anything bad that happens there, you have the risk at
least of losing your data and having a dead system, a system that won't
boot.
..
Q. Now, Mr. Alepin, what Be was proposing, though, was the dual boot at
the OEM level; right?
A. That's correct.
Q. And that's different; right?
A. Yes. In the dual boot of the OEM stage here, what happens is the OEM
would install Windows into a partition initially that had been already
set aside on the disk drive.
..
Q. Now, that process, the process that Be was actually proposing, is
that process dangerous?
A. No, not at all.
..
Q. Okay. Let's focus on the testimony that you gave on redirect about
whether or not Windows 95 sits on top of MS-DOS just like earlier
versions of Windows.
Do you recall giving that sort of testimony, sir?
A. That sort of testimony, yes.
Q. Yes. And it was your testimony that even though it's called Windows
95, it's actually just Windows 3 sitting on top of MS-DOS held together
by what Mr. Barrett called bubblegum and baling wire.
Do you remember giving that testimony, sir?
A. Well, the -- there were improvements to Windows 3.1, the graphical
user interface between the Windows 3.1 product and the Windows 95 product.
..
Q. Now, when you were testifying on redirect about portability, I just
want to be very clear.
A Java Virtual Machine, the machine itself, this virtual machine written
to run on an operating system is in no sense portable, is it?
It is designed to run on the operating system and it calls upon services
from that operating system that it then abstracts through its own set of
APIs?
..
Q. So when you're talking about portability in the context of Java, what
you're talking about is not those gray U's that I and you in your own
drawing have called virtual machines.
..
That's correct.
Q. .. If somebody is making native calls to the operating system using
these green tunnels that we've talked about and you've talked about on
redirect, whether they're doing that using JNI or RNI or J/Direct, that
impairs the portability -- that decision by the Java developer impairs
the portability of that applet, does it not?
A. To different degrees, but yes.
Q. And you suggested, I believe, but tell me if I'm wrong, on redirect
that Microsoft did something to require people writing applets to run on
the Windows virtual machine to use the green tunnels?
A. I believe my testimony was that Microsoft encouraged strongly the use
of these tunnels and did not provide other mechanisms which were part of
the JVM structure that would allow the applications to maintain higher
levels of portability.
..
Q. .. You are aware, are you not, that DRI engineers in Hungerford in
the United Kingdom spoke to Novell engineers in Provo, Utah, for hours
and hours and hours on the telephone directing them in the testing of
Windows 3.1 betas on top of DR-DOS?
..
Q. Okay. Now, you spent a long time on redirect talking about the AARD
code and the messages displayed by the AARD code.
Do you recall that, sir?
A. I do.
..
Q. .. Now, you testified that developers have this problem that they
don't know what they don't know. Do you remember saying that on redirect?
A. Yes.
..
Q. Now, you testified on redirect that Microsoft Office used
Ishellbrowser. Did you say that?
A. I did not ..
..
Q. Okay. But I just -- then I want to ask the question, you are aware,
are you not, that after Mr. Gates made the decision to B list, in Mr.
Belfiore's terms, the Ishellbrowser interface, all Microsoft
applications external to Windows stopped using it?
..
Q. Do you have any reason to doubt the statement that after Mr. Gates
decided to B list the Ishellbrowser interface, all applications at
Microsoft that were not shipped in Windows 95 stopped using the interface?
A. I think I answered the question, yes, I have no reason to believe
that applications other than applications in the Microsoft operating
system product Windows 95 stopped using the -- continued to use those
interfaces.
Q. Now, you testified about a concept of church and state on redirect,
and I believe you said that Microsoft, starting in the 1980s, made
statements to the market that there was a wall between the operating
systems side of the company and the applications side of the company.
Did you say that, sir?
A. I said that, yes, sir.
..
A. .. Everyone in the industry understood that Microsoft's applications
barriers would have lunch on the same campus as the operating systems
people. It's never been an issue.
http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/TP011207.txt
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