Submitted by It’s court time again, people. “Symantec filed a lawsuit in Seattle today alleging Microsoft committed a host of business misdeeds, including misappropriating trade secrets and violating a contract that covered code used in part of the coming Windows Vista operating system. The suit, filed in US District Court for the Western District of Washington, relates to a contract between Microsoft and Veritas, which merged into Symantec last year, dating to 1996.”
It makes you wonder if Vista will ever be released.
Has another major piece of software ever had so many delays?
If Symantec’s wish is granted, how will this affect Microsoft’s reputation?
Or is it too late, the damage is done?
Duke nukem forever doesn’t count. 🙂
>> Has another major piece of software ever had so many delays?
Uhm, pretty much every game Blizzard has ever released? Mind you, they are always successful – but that doesn’t make up for the fact their project managers don’t seem to know how to manage a time schedule.
Dont forget about the constant delays with the patches either. Blizzard has way bigger issues than just project management.
I thought it was court time again, monkies. Or Ponies. Or Cats.
Who / what species do you think is reading this site?
Clearly I’m too high a life form.
‘Symantec is seeking to stop “further development, sale or distribution of he ‘Vista’ and ‘Longhorn’ versions of the Windows client and server operating systems,” among other injunctions.’
With MS moving into anti-spyware and firewall markets lately and at least eyeing the antivirus market Symantec seems to be pulling out the big guns to protect themselves. Who can blame them really – if they do nothing they are likely to be pushed out of a very lucrative business.
Edited 2006-05-19 14:11
It’s kinda funny, when Symantec first bought out Veritas I thought it was to quash Diskeeper and fold it’s code into the steaming pile that Nortons has become; just like they did with the acquisition of PowerQuest and much akin to the acquisition of Aldus by Adobe back in the late 90’s… (For those of you not familiar with it, Aldus Photostyler and Pagemaker were kicking Photoshop and Pageshop’s backside – so they bought out their one real competitor, rebranded Pagemaker to their own label and BURIED Photostyler)
Who’d have thought Symantec’s real plan was to switch to the SCO business model. Makes sense in a way, how long can you get by on bloated software that hijacks your system worse than the malware it’s supposed to prevent and makes a P4 run like a P2, ENTIRELY on a reputation that the company hasn’t been worthy of since the introduction of Windows 95.
Once again, your troll sauce lacks spice.
Microsoft (probably accidentally) patented parts of Veritas’ software that they licensed MSFT to use, and then did their typical ‘we don’t have to listen’ dance, hoping the issue would go away. Unfortunately for whatever middle management types screwed this up, they did not realize the magnitude of their mistake in patenting key parts of Veritas’ IP.
Citing this as an SCO-esque move only shows that like 95% of the /. comments I saw about this, that you have no idea what this lawsuit is about. This is a huge mistake by Microsoft, and I’m stunned they didn’t make more effort to fix this problem before SYMC had to take it to court – and yes, they (Veritas) made a serious effort because of the relationship Symantic has with Microsoft. The Veritas part of the company couldn’t care less about pissing off Microsoft.
>> Citing this as an SCO-esque move only shows that like 95% of the /. comments I saw about this, that you have no idea what this lawsuit is about.
Let’s see… One company claims IP infringement on patents another company holds… with statements like
“These claims are unfounded because Microsoft actually purchased intellectual property rights for all relevant technologies from Veritas in 2004,”
in the mix…
It sure SOUNDS like the IBM/SCO nonsense to me… and apparantly that way to 95% of the people out there by your own admission…
That almost makes it sound like they’re up against some sort of evil illegal monopoly sucking the soul out of anyone who dare partner with them and unfairly crushing the rest who dare to compete or something.
That almost makes it sound like they’re up against some sort of evil illegal monopoly sucking the soul
Which is funny, for some reason I consider Symantec a LOT more insideous than MS… Microsoft is the ‘big evil company’ people see as the monolith – Symantec is a company people seem to irrationally trust no matter how many times Nortons screws up their computer WORSE than many malware packages do.
I hope they win. I have no love for Symantec but I want to see MS go down once and for all.
They have money but they cannot handle these battles forever.
I want to see MS go down once and for all.
Even if they lose in the worst possible way, there is no way Microsoft will “go down.” Besides, if they ever go down suddenly, they will take a big chunk of the economy with them.
Someday maybe ReactOS http://reactos.org will be good enough to wean people away from MS to the wonderful world of F/OSS. Then we will see a reduction in the influence of MS.
ven if they lose in the worst possible way, there is no way Microsoft will “go down.” Besides, if they ever go down suddenly, they will take a big chunk of the economy with them.
not only that but also set the world in computer technology about 10-15 yrs.
not only that but also set the world in computer technology about 10-15 yrs.
I didn’t understand. Do you mean that would set the world of computer technology back or ahead by 10 to 15 years?
not only that but also set the world in computer technology about 10-15 yrs.
I didn’t understand. Do you mean that would set the world of computer technology back or ahead by 10 to 15 years?
oh no I made an error i never make errors i meant ahead 10-15 yrs.
Reading over the brief, it looks like this is simply a disagreement over what technology (if any) MS licensed from Veritas before it was acquired by Symantec. This case will hinge entirely on the interpretation of that agreement. I sincerely hope that Symantec isn’t adopting SCO’s “business model” (acquire technology and sue). But there’s no question that Symantec’s (and other tool makers) markets are going to be squeezed by technologies which will be included in Vista. Sure, they can add value. But it’s kind of like a goldfish swimming in a pond that’s drying up. Sooner or later, you have to wonder whether there will be any water left in the pond.
with so many microsoft lawsuits going on all the time. there should be a microsoft court tv network for exclusive coverage.