"Microsoft's institutional arrogance tends to irritate everyone the company deals with, but judges are inappropriate targets for this kind of behavior, because they don't have to put up with it." - Dan Gilmor

The DOJ and states vs. Microsoft (the whole sad story)

If you were one of the thousands of Windows 3.1 beta testers, and if you happened to be using DR DOS rather than MS-DOS, you probably butted heads with a seemingly innocuous, yet odd, error message like that in Figure 1. As you'll see, this message is a visible manifestation of a chunk of code whose implementation is technically slippery and evasive.

While it's impossible to gauge intent, the apparent purpose of this code is to lay down arbitrary technical obstacles for DOS-workalike programs. The message appears with the release labeled "final beta release (build 61)" (dated December 20, 1991), and with "pre-release build 3.10.068" (January 21, 1992). Similar messages (with different error numbers) are produced in builds 61 and 68 by MN.COM, SETUP.EXE, and by the versions of HIMEM.SYS, SMARTDRV.EXE, and MSD.EXE (Microsoft diagnostics) packaged with Windows.

The first step in discovering why the error message appeared under DR DOS but not MS-DOS was to examine the relevant WIN.COM code. However, the WIN.COM code that produced this message turned out to be XOR encrypted, self-modifying, and deliberately obfuscated--all in an apparent attempt to thwart disassembly.

In November of 1998 Blue Mountain Arts discovered evidence that a number of personalized Blue Mountain electronic greeting cards had been diverted to junk mail trash by Microsoft Corporation. Blue Mountain voiced strong objections to Microsoft over this conduct to no avail. In addition, some Blue Mountain cards were blocked by Microsoft's WebTV Networks, so, on December 8,1998, Blue Mountain filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and its subsidiary WebTV.

The case alleges a "Master Plan" to swindle the Brum-based startup out of its trade secrets. Sendo says it delivered a unique industry insight to Microsoft through this partnership, insight that the industry (as represented by Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and the Japanese manufacturers) weren't themselves willing to share.

But it was never a partnership of equals, alleges Sendo, and after promising that StinkerOS was ready in the middle of last year, Microsoft used the delays to uncover Sendo's integration secrets and carrier relationships, and then cut off their air supply, using this knowledge to promote its new sweetheart, the Orange SPV instead.

Terms of the deal were not announced. SCO's Sontag said previous licensing deals have brought between $8 million $10 million dollars in revenue to the company.

SCO's stock rose nearly 38 percent, to $6.55, in trading early Monday.

Hewlett-Packard, another proponent of Linux, is unaware of any intellectual-property infringement, according to a statement provided to CNET News.com. Sun Microsystems, which has lately been promoting Linux, says it is covered by its existing Unix licensing deals.

"(The license) allows Microsoft to leverage the fear, uncertainty and doubt that is moving around Linux," said Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata. "This is a defensive move on the part of Microsoft, which isn't to say that the sales and marketing people won't take advantage of it."

Bruce Perens, who helped develop the Debian version of Linux and who is an unofficial spokesman for open-source programmers, said the licensing deal benefits Microsoft's anti-Linux stance and its attempt to foster fear, uncertainty and doubt--"FUD," in computing parlance--around Linux.

The deal also confirms his suspicion, he says, that the software giant has been a force behind SCO's legal push. Microsoft has denied that charge. "This benefits Microsoft more than anything else. Microsoft does a little Unix work, but not much," Perens said.

The 937 boxes of court-ordered documents had been safeguarded by Redman Records of Salt Lake City since the mid-1990s as part of Caldera International's unfair-competition lawsuit against Microsoft.

That suit was settled in January 2000, and Caldera -- now The SCO Group -- was paying up to $1,500 a month to store the documents. In October, the company persuaded U.S. District Judge Dee Benson to order their destruction.

However, just as the shredding was to begin, Sun Microsystem's attorneys halted it with a subpoena. The company, seeking evidence that might help in its own antitrust suit against Microsoft, eventually pulled out 40 boxes of the computer giant's secret internal communications for digital imaging.

Microsoft will pay $750 million to AOL Time Warner to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed by AOL on behalf of its subsidiary Netscape last year, the companies said Thursday.

The two companies also set a seven-year licensing agreement that allows AOL Time Warner to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer browsing technology in its flagship Internet service provider service without having to pay royalties. AOL Time Warner is the parent of CNN/Money.

Microsoft is holding up compensation claims from a quarter of million Californians in order to punish Lindows.com, and to coerce the class action plaintiffs "into siding with Microsoft against its Lindows competitor," according to a court filing seen by The Register. The document, filed on 21st November by Townsend and Townsend and Crew, lead counsel for the Californian class action consumers, points out that none of the claims being held up was actually filed via Lindows.com, yet Microsoft has held them "hostage" for over two months.

In the suit, filed in federal court in San Jose, Calif., RealNetworks alleges that Microsoft has "pursued a broad course of predatory conduct over a period of years...resulting in substantial lost revenue and business for RealNetworks."

RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser The complaint adds that Microsoft has wielded its "monopoly power to restrict how PC makers install competing media players while forcing every Windows user to take Microsoft's media player, whether they want it or not."

Microsoft ended another long-standing legal dispute on Monday, announcing a $440 million settlement and licensing deal with InterTrust Technologies, which markets digital rights management tools.

The settlement marks the end of the nearly 3-year-old patent infringement suit. InterTrust's suit contended that virtually all of Microsoft's products--from the company's flagship Windows operating system to its multimedia software--trespassed on InterTrust's content protection holdings.

The deal opens the door for Microsoft to expand the array of antipiracy tools it provides with its digital media software, including Windows Media Player.

PALO ALTO, CA -- January 23, 2001 -- Sun Microsystems Inc. announced today that Microsoft Corporation has agreed to settle Sun's lawsuit regarding Java technology. The settlement reached today will protect the future integrity of the Java platform. In addition, as part of the agreement, Microsoft has agreed to pay Sun $20 million, to accept Sun's termination of the prior license agreement, and to a permanent injunction against unauthorized use of Sun's JAVA COMPATIBLE trademark.

To protect those developers using Microsoft's outdated implementation of Sun's technology, Sun has licensed Microsoft to distribute its existing versions, provided that all future versions of such products conform to and pass Sun's compatibility tests.