Word: microsoft
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...must forgive Bill Gates if he's feeling a bit paranoid this week. By a brutal coincidence, his firm faces the unenviable task of defending itself in four different courtrooms simultaneously. Tiny software companies in Utah and Connecticut are taking Microsoft to task for its strong-arm operating-system tactics. Over in California, larger rival Sun Microsystems wants to save its Java programming language from Microsoft "pollution." And oh, yeah, there's the small matter of the antitrust trial, resuming Tuesday in Washington, where Justice Department lawyers are set to wheel out their biggest gun yet, an executive from...
Despite all this jockeying for position on Gates' enemies list, however, there's no company that Microsoft claims to fear more than America Online. At this point, Microsoft's legal strategy in the antitrust case seems to consist largely of proving AOL's worth as a once and future competitor in just about every digital arena. At a deposition two weeks ago, Microsoft put AOL's Steve Case on the rack over his business plans. Now AOL exec David Colburn will be called as a hostile witness. "They've put most of their chips on the AOL marker," says George...
Lucky for Bill Gates that he's the world's richest geek. Already saddled with three trials about existing Microsoft software, Gates now has to defend an operating system at the heart of what's supposed to be next year's Big Thing. Two days after the trustbusting main event got going again in Washington, Danbury-based Bristol Technology Inc. opened its own suit against the Redmond giant, claiming that Gates & Co. put the Seattle screws to their software business by withholding vital information when Bristol licensed MS's Windows NT system. "Now it's official -- all of Microsoft...
...course, all four trials -- besides the Washington and Connecticut versions, there's one in California over Java, and another in Utah about DOS (how's that for relevance?) -- talk about pretty much the same thing: Microsoft's leveraging its platform dominance into software dominance. Bristol (which makes a product called Wind/U that is meant to bridge the code gulf between Windows and a competitor, Unix, and vice versa) says Microsoft withheld the NT code to keep Bristol -- and Unix programmers -- out of the software game now dominated by Windows-viable products. Microsoft, unsurprisingly, denies the claim. But after Gates pulled...
...system--though it will run on virtually any PC and most Macs. Supposedly 15 million people use it worldwide. (Since it's available free, no one knows how many copies have actually been passed around.) It's also the poster child of the so-called open-source movement. Unlike Microsoft Windows or the Mac OS, Linux and many of the programs that work with it are built and maintained by volunteers scattered all over the Net. The source code, the usually secret "recipe" that determines how the software works, is published online for anyone to read and improve...