Legal Archive

Seen this at ActiveWin: A Microsoft employee has been fired for his blog posting titled, "Even Microsoft wants G5s", which includes photos of delivery of Power Mac G5s to Microsoft's Redmond Campus: "To my mind, it's an innocuous post. The presence of Macs on the Microsoft campus isn't a secret (for everything from graphic design work to the Mac Business Unit), and when I took the picture, I made sure to stand with my back to the building so that nothing other than the computers and the truck would be shown — no building features, no security measures, and no Microsoft personnel. However, it obviously wasn't enough." Check the picture and the blog here. We hope Microsoft will reconsider.

The XPde team has released a document on the legal impact of releasing Windows "lookalike" user interfaces in, specifically, Free Software.

According to the Seattle Times Microsoft will make some changes to it's operating system and browser software due to patent infringements. The article also states that Microsoft will deliver Java support in its operating system a bit longer than previously announced.

Hewlett Packard is the first major company to offer indemnification for its Linux-using customers from any legal action that SCO might take. Other companies, such as Lindows.com and Sun have offered protection, but based on agreements that they have with SCO. HP has not paid any Linux licensing fees to SCO.

SCO has terminated IBM's Dynix licence. Dynix was a product developed by Sequent, which was acquired by IBM in 1999. Technology developed by Sequent for its Unix OS (Dynix) called Numa was subsequently rolled into Linux. According to this article at Vnunet.com, it looks like a lot of this goes back to SCO's bitterness about project Monterrey, a joint venture between SCO, Intel, and IBM. IBM withdrew from the project, which was SCO's last chance at the big time.

Scott McNealy, the chairman, president and CEO of systems vendor Sun Microsystems, has dramatically warned companies of the legal dangers of using open source software such as the Linux operating system. Following on from SCO Group's threats to sue Linux users over its intellectual property claims, McNealy told an audience of UK businesses that they should steer clear of open source software unless their suppliers can offer insurance against such legal action.

A California judge on Friday gave preliminary approval to a landmark settlement under which Microsoft will pay $1.1 billion to settle a class-action suit that claimed it overcharged consumers for Windows.

The Justice Department and 19 states have made peace with Microsoft Corp. over its monopolistic misdeeds. But Tom Reilly is still on the company’s case. The Massachusetts attorney general is the lone public sector holdout who has refused to settle with the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant over allegations that it attempted to crush competitors with monopolistic tactics.

Big Blue denies SCO Group's allegations that it misappropriated Unix trade secrets, but it isn't giving hints about what its eventual strategy will be for battling the lawsuit.

MozillaQuest has an exclusive mini-interview with Linus Torvalds regarding the SCO-IBM law suit.

The battle between Sun and Microsoft over inclusion of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) in Windows wages on. At stake, according to a U.S. District Court, is the fairness of the fight between Java and .Net. for middleware supremacy. Read the analysis at ZDNet TechUpdate.

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Microsoft to begin shipping Sun Microsystems' Java with the Windows operating system within 120 days, after the companies fought over implementing a ruling he made last month.

The order to carry Java with Windows will remain in force pending the final outcome of Sun Microsystem's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. According to Sun, Microsoft tried to marginalise Java by unfair usage of its software monopoly position, making Windows incompatible with its platform independent programming language. More info at CBSNews.com and CNET News.com.

These frivolous news comes from fellow news web site, windowsxp.nu, which is one of the well known sites for Windows-related news on the web (traffic-wise seems to be similar to OSNews, around 90,000 page views per day). Microsoft sent a legal threat to Steven Bink to hand over the site before Dec 19th, otherwise they will respond legally. Microsoft has taken a similar hard line against other similar Web sites in the past; in 1998, the company demanded that Paul Thurrott should change the name of the 'Windows SuperSite' to 'SuperSite for Windows', and Active Windows was forced to change its name to ActiveWin. Read more for a short editorial on the subject.