Novell originally filed the suit claiming that Microsoft purposely suppressed and sabotaged WordPerfect, a word processing platform developed by Novell, in order to consolidate users to Microsoft Word. Consequently, Novell claims they suffered severe financial loss due to Microsoft’s tampering. Alternately, Microsoft has cited Novell’s own mismanagement for the decline of WordPerfect’s popularity and usability.

From Network World:

In a filing to U.S. federal judge J. Frederick Motz, Microsoft’s lawyer said Monday that the company intends to renew its motion for judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

In ruling on the renewed motion, under Rule 50 the court may allow judgment on the verdict if the jury returned a verdict, order a new trial, or direct the entry.

Incredibly, some jurors were reported to be in tears after being dismissed. Attorneys on both sides admitted to being disappointed as they were hopeful to get some kind of verdict after all of this time.

Oddly, the jury was hung at an 11-1 decision against Microsoft, which causes me to fondly recall all of those episodes of The Sopranos where the mob dudes would terrorize one poor juror into holding out from agreeing on a verdict. Members of the Sopranos mob family would intimidate and threaten one vulnerable juror in order to coerce them into dissenting from the otherwise unanimous jurors’ decision against the accused gangster. Without an agreement among jurors, the case ends in mistrial and the mobster walks free.

But who knows if Microsoft actually has that kind of menacing clout; it all just sounds very odd.

The actual request to dismiss the case is expected to be filed early next year.

Novell made its closing arguments in the trial yesterday, reiterating their claim that Microsoft deliberately sabotaged WordPerfect by tampering with programmer’s access to extensions and thus making it impossible for WordPerfect to run properly on Windows. Novell has argued that their precipitous decline of shares in the word-processing market, falling from 50% in 1990 to a lowly 10% in 1996, is a direct result of Microsoft suppressing WordPerfect’s access and successful operation.

Microsoft has countered Novell’s claims in press releases, stating that the lack of quality in WordPerfect was due to Novell’s “own mismanagement and poor business decisions.” Microsoft defends itself further by arguing that, as of 1994, WordPerfect had already begun to decline in popularity and value and again places that blame on Novell, who they say had hoped to deprive “Windows of a key application [and] limit the success of Windows.”

Jurors are scheduled to begin deliberating tomorrow if not later today.

I barely remember even using WordPerfect in my youth, but should Microsoft be found liable for the lack of availability of WordPerfect, I will then have to wonder how many times in my past I wouldn’t have gritted the words, “I hate Microsoft Word,” or, “I hate OpenOffice,” because I could’ve been using WordPerfect instead.

Then again, if it was still around, it’s just as likely I would’ve been muttering, “I hate WordPerfect,” too. Some people. They’re never satisfied.

Novell explained on its website, "With Novell Pulse, people continents apart can work together in real-time, sharing and co-browsing information or creating or editing a document.  Individuals can also manage content overload by choosing people and topics to follow and stashing files – both native and office type – along with their related groups and conversations."

Then here’s the Google-y part (although anyone who paid attention will note that Pulse already sounds a lot like Mountain View’s AIM-on-steroids offering): Pulse "will also work seamlessly with Google Wave so you and anyone you want to work with can . . . get down to business."

As for availability, there’s good news and bad news.  The bad: Pulse isn’t supposed to launch until 2010, so it’ll be a while before anyone can evaluate it.  The good: everyone should be able to evaluate it, because Novell has promised that there’ll be a free version.

A lot is riding on Pulse because, as Zee M Kane observed, Novell’s the first major corporation to embrace Google Wave.  What happens here could help determine if it catches on.

Related Articles:

> Will Google Wave Shape The Future Of Online Communication?

> Google Wave Simplified: How It Basically Works

> Google Wave Invitations Roll Out

Well today, they have expanded on that partnership with Microsoft, buying an additional $100 Million in certificates for expanded support from Novell. This includes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server support and support for moving toward an enterprise-class Linux platform.

The two companies are working closely to make it easier for companies to enhance the interoperability of the two operating systems.

"The collaboration between Microsoft and Novell has been built on our desire to meet our customers’ real-life IT requirements as well as give our partners greater breadth in their solution offerings," said Microsoft COO Kevin Turner.

"Some customers have told us they want to be able to run Windows Server and Linux together seamlessly, but in many cases, they need help with the transition to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from other Linux environments," he added.

Among companies who are already running Windows Server and SUSE together are BMW, Wal-Mart, and SouthWest Airlines.

The new elements of the deal between Microsoft and Novell will take effect in November, around the two-year anniversary of the partnership’s beginning.

The more Linux fans Microsoft can get on its side, the better the company will probably fare in the OS wars as it struggles with Vista discontent and Apple success.

Hell Freezes Over: Microsoft Supporting Linux

Silverlight for Linux will be called Moonlight, and Microsoft’s Linux pal Novell will do the heavy lifting in porting the software. Microsoft made the announcement that to be cross-platform with Silverlight, they would extend support to Linux.

Miguel de Icaza and the Mono Project team at Novell will be the ones to take Silverlight beyond Windows and Mac. He had more details about the announcement on his blog:

The highlights of the collaboration are:

•  Microsoft will give Novell access to the test suites for Silverlight to ensure that we have a compatible specification. The same test suite that Microsoft uses for Silverlight.

•  Microsoft will give us access to the Silverlight specifications: details that might be necessary to implement 1.0, beyond what is currently published on the web; and specifications on the 1.1 version of Silverlight as it is updated.

•  Microsoft will make the codecs for video and audio available to users of Moonlight from their web site. The codecs will be binary codecs, and they will only be licensed for use with Moonlight on a web browser (sorry, those are the rules for the Media codecs).

•  Novell will implement Silverlight 1.0 and 1.1 and will distribute it for the major Linux distributions at the time of the shipment. We will offer some kind of one-click install for Linux users (no "Open a terminal and type su followed by your password…" as well as RPM and DEB packages for the major distros and operating systems.

"This is an historical collaboration between an open source project and Microsoft," he continued. "They have collaborated with other folks on the server space (Xen, PHP and) but this is their first direct contribution to the open source desktop."

Microsoft’s "past contributions" to Linux have been much different, including an assortment of veiled threats, highly critical white papers, and other unpleasantness that has been revealed over the years through leaked memos and other accounts.

This is a significant change from the Microsoft that generated the infamous "Halloween documents" listing The Fear Microsoft had of Linux and its inroads into the lucrative server software market.

SCO Thwarted In Unix Decision

Some final matters of law still need to be hammered out, but it looks like a decision handed down in Utah by federal judge Dale Kimball has finally knocked out SCO’s claims to Unix copyrights.

Their lawsuit against Novell has drawn a 102-page ruling from the bench, and as Pamela Jones at Groklaw noted, it’s all about Novell:

Here is what matters most:

[T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights.

That’s Aaaaall, Folks! The court also ruled that "SCO is obligated to recognize Novell’s waiver of SCO’s claims against IBM and Sequent". That’s the ball game. There are a couple of loose ends, but the big picture is, SCO lost. Oh, and it owes Novell a lot of money from the Microsoft and Sun licenses.

Groklaw also said the trial scheduled for September 17th "appears it will mostly (but not all) be about what SCO owes Novell. Novell’s slander of title counterclaim goes to trial, for example, but SCO’s does not."

SCO responded to the decision with a statement, saying they were "obviously disappointed" in the ruling.

"However, the court clearly determined that SCO owns the copyrights to the technology developed or derived by SCO after Novell transferred the assets to SCO in 1995," said SCO.

Both Microsoft and Sun licensed Unix technology from SCO in 2003.

Neither licensee has released a statement yet regarding the Utah court’s decision. The stock market has weighed in with its opinion, and the verdict from Wall Street has been a bigger bloodbath than the last Harry Potter novel.

Shares of SCO plunged from their 1.56 open to a current price of 44 cents. SCO may present a defiant tone in their post-verdict statement, but investors aren’t listening.

The Geek.com reports:

The Free Software Foundation may ban Novell from selling new versions of the Linux operating system due to concerns over the close partnership with Microsoft, since its Windows product is a direct competitor. The Free Software Foundation controls access to all of the latest versions of Open Source code. Without it, Novell would have to do its own research and development to upgrade its version of the Linux operating system.

General Counsel for the foundation, Eben Moglen, says the board has yet to make a decision on whether to ban Novell from access to new versions of Linux beginning in March. Moglen added he expected an announcement regarding a decision in the next two weeks.

This would be a bad thing for the FSF to strip Novell of its Linux distro, bad for business, bad for Novell, and bad for any remediation actions between the open and closed source communities. The open source community had a moral high ground in their competition with closed source companies. The current FSF position puts that moral high ground into question.

Open source showed the way to make money off of volunteer work, open intellectual property, and the ability to develop a grass roots programming group that basically extended, enhanced and improved Linux to the point where Red Hat and Novell can make money off of it. Open Source turned “free” into a workable business model, the only real one that can be used as an example for other open source projects.

To strip Novell of its ability to get new Linux distro’s removes the moral high ground right out from underneath the entire open source movement.

In general, it’s a bad idea, its bad for business, bad for everyone involved.

Bryan Richard from Linux Magazine states clearly:

What the Reuters article and the FSF’s comments illustrate is just how fearful the Linux community is of the Microsoft-Novell agreement. In general, the concern is that Microsoft or Novell will attempt to introduce patent-infringing code into Linux or other some other large Open Source project, thus opening a large audience of developers and companies to legal assault.

Touches deeply on the issue, if the Linux community allows fear, or even the GPL V3.0 which has been panned a lot as being too restrictive is used against Novell, every other Linux distro has to stop and ask the question “when am I next depending on who I make an agreement with?”.

This doesn’t drive people towards Linux, it drives them away from a fairly decent operating system, with a lot of commercial product support.

Its time for the FSF to stop and think about what it is doing before it deals a blow to Linux, and a excellent marketing opportunity for anyone who makes closed source software.

Comments

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both
civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management.
Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through
his blog, Managing
Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the
ITtoolbox blogging community.

Concerns over the patent agreement reached as part of Novell and Microsoft’s deal has motivated Allison to submit his resignation to Novell. A copy of the letter posted at Groklaw highlighted the conflict Allison sees with the deal:

Samba is one of those open source works that made system administrators truly excited over the past decade. With Samba, a system running the Linux operating system could be configured to handle print and file duties for Windows desktop clients, and do so invisibly to the users on the network.

That meant older hardware could be packed with voluminous hard drives and a copy of Linux for far less expense than a newer system complete with Microsoft licenses to act in the same capacity. Samba might be the most significant project to emerge over the years, save Linux and the Apache web server.

Samba’s supporters have protested the Novell-Microsoft agreement almost since it was made public. On November 12th, the Samba team announced its strong disapproval, and called the deal an exchange of “the long term interests of the entire Free Software community for a short term advantage for Novell over their competitors.”

Allison will move on, and land at Google, as Mary Jo Foley of Microsoft Watch learned from him. It’s an interesting development, considering Google’s reputation for lengthy interviews and lead times between interviews and job offers.

But like other notable Googlers Guido van Rossum, the creator of the Python language, and Vint Cerf, the father of the Internet, Allison brings a pretty solid reputation to the mix, so fast-tracking his move to Mountain View probably became a priority for Google. It should be a win for Samba’s devotees as well.

—

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Part of that Microsoft-Novell deal involves selling licenses for Novell’s SuSE product, with Microsoft’s expansive sales force handling those customer purchases. Some have criticized the agreement, by contending Microsoft comes out ahead at Novell’s expense.

Microsoft is touting some recent deals as evidence that the maligned agreement will benefit Novell.

Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and AIG Technologies, a member company of the massive American International Group, have all taken up Microsoft on the Novell licenses.

Representatives from all three companies extolled the interoperability between Linux and Windows stemming from the work completed by Novell and Microsoft.

Similar platitudes came from the executive offices of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian.

“Deutsche Bank’s, Credit Suisse’s and AIG Technologies’ decisions to deploy SUSE Linux Enterprise, following so closely on the heels of our announcement with Microsoft, are powerful, early proof points of the value of our joint collaboration, and we expect more success stories like this over the coming quarters,” said Hovsepian.

Criticism of the deal rose quickly through the Internet, and Hovsepian addressed it in a letter to the Linux community.

“Our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property,” said Hovsepian.

A Microsoft spokesperson likewise asserted this was the case in a separate statement.

Although the deal has been characterized as one that leaves Linux distributor Red Hat on the outside looking in, Red Hat brushed off such assertions and hinted Novell had signed its own death warrant by partnering with Microsoft.

—

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian placed an open letter to the Linux community online, as an answer to angry suggestions that Novell had admitted Linux infringed on Microsoft patents.

“Our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property,” said Hovsepian. “When we entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents.”

Microsoft also concurred with this in a statement the company issued.

“Microsoft and Novell have agreed to disagree on whether certain open source offerings infringe Microsoft patents and whether certain Microsoft offerings infringe Novell patents,” the company said, and also noted Novell was “absolutely right” in its assertion that admission or acknowledgment of patent issues was not part of the agreement.

“Our interest in signing this agreement was to secure interoperability and joint sales agreements, but Microsoft asked that we cooperate on patents as well, and so a patent cooperation agreement was included as a part of the deal,” Hovsepian said.

The CEO also listed several ways he feels Novell has supported the open source community with its patent practices.

Those included indemnifying its Linux customers from accusations of patent infringement, and efforts at helping reform the USPTO process that has resulted in the issuance of hundreds of “bad patents” of obvious, non-original creations.

Microsoft will have to earn some trust among the open source community.

If the company were to act against free/open source software developers where they would not be permitted to distribute their work due to potential infringement, Microsoft will have a full-scale riot on its hands in answer to that.

—

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.