Comment by dosman33
3 years ago
Heh, I remember finding shreds of these news groups threads and news letters posted to Geocities and such in the mid-90's when I was coming of age. "The MUF List" - Microsoft's Undocumented Features, etc. I still have my DOS programming books but I never really did much myself, other than some assembly programs written in debug. The list of dirty things MS did to other companies is extensive. The DriveSpace debacle was the one I remember most. If memory serves, they tricked the company that made a compressed filesystem driver for DOS/Windows to "license" the feature to MS, then MS just forgot to ever pay them. The company was so cash starved they couldn't outlast a lengthy lawsuit to recoup what they were legally owed. MS did every dirty trick they could. Bill Gates is one seriously dirty MFer.
> The company was so cash starved they couldn't outlast a lengthy lawsuit to recoup what they were legally owed.
They were actually paid $120M by Microsoft [1]:
> A Los Angeles jury Wednesday ordered Microsoft Corp. to pay $120 million for infringing a software patent held by Stac Electronics Co., a much smaller software firm based in Carlsbad, Calif.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-02-24-fi-26671-...
Stac sued MS and won. But, Microsoft counter-sued Stac for reverse engineering MS software-- Microsoft's claim was that the features used to implement Stacker were undocumented by Microsoft, and only used internally by Microsoft. Microsoft won this suit. And, ultimately "invested in" Stac and paid some royalties as the ultimate settlement.
The "funny" thing was that Microsoft was claiming that it documented everything and that competitors could make equivalent competing products to their own on their platforms to the court in the anti-trust case that was around the same time.
MS management and their company were and are sleazy and ruthless to a fault.
> MS [..] were and are sleazy and ruthless to a fault.
Point me at the good companies? The ones not self interestedly trying to maximise both market share and profits.
"For Profit" companies have clear incentives. This behaviour is common and feels like a feature not a bug?
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Justice delayed is justice denied.
I wonder if we can say the same for timely payments especially when maintaining proper cashflow is critical for small businesses.
Somehow it seems like "paid" is the wrong word when you're forced by a court to do it. Almost like stealing a car and then claiming you "donated" it to the true owner upon arrest.
Winning a settlement doesn't automatically get you the money. It just gives you legal rights when trying to collect -- you still have to actually collect, which can be difficult and time-consuming.
Do we know if MS actually paid this settlement, and if so, on what schedule?
The way I understood the story back then was that they wanted a license deal with MSFT just like MSFT had with the hardware companies. MSFT wanted to just buy them out. Lawsuits, court, and so on finally forced the sale of the company to MSFT for the amount in the settlement.
That's not the story on Wikipedia.
Microsoft entered into negotiations with Stac Electronics to licence Stacker, but the deal fell though (allegedly, Stac claim that Microsoft didn't offer any money, just the right to sell enhancement products).
So Microsoft instead licensed a competing product called DoubleDisk from Vertisoft. So of course MS didn't pay anything to Stac Electronics, but presumably Vertisoft was compensated (hopefully fairly, we haven't heard otherwise... But this is Microsoft)
Stac later successfully sued MS for patient infringement, which is where the story about Microsoft alleged "no cash licensing" offer came from.
>Bill Gates is one seriously dirty MFer. Agreed. Completely agreed. Just watched the death of OS/2 video, and it confirms it.
Unfortunately, MS is even worse these days.
Is it? How so? I'm not saying they're angels, but I don't know if I'd consider the MSFT of today "worse" than in the 90s and early 2000s. It's certainly a more complicated beast than it was then.
I don't think they're worse. I also don't think they're much better. Microsoft remains Microsoft.
They went from sneaky tactics to normalising and encouraging mass surveillance.
True. They are waiting for the days of subscription only. as soon as they can.
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