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Microsoft's Opening Statement in Novell v. MS Contradicted ~ pj - Updated 3Xs
Friday, October 21 2011 @ 03:03 PM EDT

Now that we know what both Novell and Microsoft lawyers said in their opening statements Tuesday at the antitrust trial just starting in Utah over WordPerfect and QuattroPro, folks here are Groklaw are starting to find exhibits from the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust trial collection here on Groklaw that do seem to raise questions about the facts asserted in the Microsoft opening statement.

So I decided to put the report about the Microsoft opening statement from the courtroom up again, with some of the exhibits we've uncovered, in the hope that it will be useful by comparing them. If you find more, please add them in your comments. We're still transcribing the exhibits, so feel free to help with that as well, by all means. We're concentrating on this page now, but you can work on whatever interests you.

First, here's Chris Brown's report on what Microsoft's attorney told the jury in his opening statement:

Microsoft's Opening Statement:

David Tulchin then provided the opening statement for Microsoft.

Mr. Tulchin told the jury that this case is only regarding the period from July 1994 until March of 1996, the period that Novell owned WordPerfect.

He said Novell made bad decisions with WordPerfect.

He said the Windows 95 beta was not a final product, that the namespace extension was a Microsoft invention, owned by Microsoft.

He said that Microsoft had an operating system monopoly, but that Novell's expert has previously testified that Microsoft legally obtained its monopoly. He went on that conduct is not anti-competitive if it was taken for a legitimate business purpose.

He described Microsoft history and growth... Bill Gates, the writing of Basic, PC/MS DOS, Windows.

He showed the timeline of Microsoft Word and Excel GUI release for Apple Macintosh in 1985. Then he showed the WordPerfect (GUI) timeline with WordPerfect 1.0 for Macintosh in 1988, then nothing for Microsoft Windows until 1991.

He says the evidence will show the reason they were slow was that WordPerfect was always late.

Novell bought WordPerfect, but they didn't own it at this time (referring to the GUI releases shown on the timeline).

He said that at the time Novell was well-known for NetWare, that the emails Novell will be showing were from 1991, 1992, 1993 about competition that was about Microsoft competition with NetWare, not the software at issue in this case.

He said in 1994 Novell bought Quattro Pro from Borland.

He showed a timeline of WordPerfect market share of DOS and said that WordPerfect dominated the market. He showed the Microsoft Word timeline for DOS share (very low).

He said Microsoft Word was very successful on the Macintosh, a GUI platform.

He said that when Windows 3.0 was released in May of 1990, users moved in droves from DOS to Windows. But WordPerfect didn't have a product for Windows -- they were miles behind.

He shows on a chart the first WordPerfect release for Microsoft Windows was 1.5 years later.

He showed a chart of WordPerfect market share for Windows and Microsoft Word, generally showing Wordperfect's share increasing until 1995 then dropping, while Microsoft Word's share was increasing.

(Chris: In my notes I estimate the data points as: WordPerfect, 1991 release 15%, 1992 32%, 1993 29%, 1994 25%, 1995 18%, 1996 8%. And for Word: 1990 92%, 1991 70%, 1992 58%, then line increases to 90+% tracking decrease in WP).

Mr. Tulchin showed a Novell (WordPerfect) document dated Dec 21, 1993 describing WordPerfect 6 as "too slow, too many bugs to be considered sufficiently stable. Requires too much memory and too much disk space."

He shows Novell's 1996-1998 business plan dated June 29, 1995 which reports that they are still recovering from WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows which was too slow and buggy.

He shows a document dated July 15, 1994 from a PerfectOffice Suite Business Review Exercise "Microsoft Office is currently the industry-leading suite... It's one-two punch, Word and Excel, is the strongest combination in the industry."

Mr. Tulchin told the jury that if you have a product, and its quality is not too high, and you have a competition that's the "one-two punch", well, you can tell what happens.

He showed a Novell August 1994 business plan reporting that their partnering with Borland had not been received well.

He showed a chart indicating the market shift to suites, and it showed revenue from sales of suites versus stand-alone applications. It depicted a decline of stand-alone spreadsheets and word processors and a corresponding increase in revenue from suites. He pointed out that by 1995 suites were three times the combined revenue of standalone spreadsheets and word processors.

He said that the time Novell purchased these products, there had been two major changes in the market -- first, the shift from DOS platform to GUIs and second, the shift to suites.

He claimed that in effect Novell was purchasing products in decline, that Novell and the companies before it were not adapting to technology. He showed a graphic of a 24-frame film roll versus an 8GB SD card holding up to 5,000 photos. He said that if you don't adapt, you'll be left by the wayside.

He showed a chart of Novell's stock price at the time Novell announced the purchase of WordPerfect and Quattro Pro, saying it indicates the market reaction to Novell's decision. He said the announcement came after the market closed on March 21, 1994, that it closed the day at $23.75, but the next day it was down to $20, then the day after that to $19. He says that Novell's market capitalization fell 20% or a drop of $1,467,849,750 on an announced WordPerfect and Quattro Pro purchase price of $1,555,000,000.

He claims that investors recognized that it was the purchase of declining products, that these two products were not worth what Novell was willing to pay.

He said that Chicago (Windows 95) represented a big advance in the user interface, that namespace extensions were only a small part, that the namespace extension APIs accounted for just 4 out of approximately 2,500 APIs in Windows 95, that their expert estimates Window 95 has as many as 2,800+.

He said there were three reasons for withdrawing support for the namespace extension APIs.

First, third-party programs that called the namespace extension APIs could crash the Windows 95 shell.

Second, namespace extension APIs were not compatible with future versions of Windows then under development in 1994 (Windows 95, the unreleased Cairo, and Windows NT). He said the Windows NT team, developing Windows for servers, were very concerned with stability. They lobbied Bill Gates hard to eliminate support for the namespace extension APIs.

Third, the namespace extension APIs did not achieve the functionality Bill Gates hoped could be achieved. He had wanted users to be able to launch from the hierarchical view in the left pane and run in the right hand content pane.

He said that Windows 95 allowed users to launch WordPerfect and Quattro Pro multiple ways -- from the Start menu and from WordPerfect and Quattro Pro icons on the desktop. He said these were new features in Windows 95. He claimed Microsoft invented these methods.

He said what Novell wanted was a third way to get to WordPerfect and Quattro Pro via the Explorer. He showed a graphic of a prototype of the unreleased "InfoCenter". The graphic showed Explorer with a namespace mailbox inbox with email messages in the content pane.

He showed how ISVs were able to add folders, visible in Explorer, to get to WordPerfect and Quatro Pro.

He further said that namespace extensions were never removed from Windows 95, and if Novell really needed them, they were there. Support was removed, and it was not guaranteed to stay there.

He referred to Novell's exhibit 1 and highlighted the portion before that section pointed out by Novell, "... Having the Office team really think through the information intensive scenarios and be a demanding client of systems is absolutely critical to our future success. We can't compete with Lotus and WordPerfect/Novell without this".

Mr. Tulchin said Novell's highlighted section is not about the namespace extension APIs; it's about the application developers making their product the best possible. He said that Novell could have written their own software to get that functionality, or they could have used the remaining APIs.

He then referred to a Microsoft non-disclosure agreement/contract for pre-release products signed May 24, 1994 by WordPerfect which reads: "The Product may not operate correctly and may be substantially modified prior to first commercial shipment. Company assumes entire risk with respect to the use of the product."

He said that Novell claims the reason they were late is because they had to do the work themselves rather than rely on Microsoft's work.

(break for lunch)

Resuming, Mr. Tulchin then showed reasons Novell was late.

He displayed an email dated August 3, 1994 from Ad Rietveld to Jim Tolonen "After Windows 3.1 (16-bit) products are released this year, move large percentage of Windows resources over to Chicago (32-bit)... There are very few resources on Chicago at this time."

He displayed an email dated April 3, 1995. Novell Business Applications Business Plan "Tremendous growth in the suite category has resulted in a corresponding drop in the growth rate of standalone applications... Weak vis-a-vis Microsoft in perception for corporate strategy, vision, and ability to develop software... Third to suite market. Microsoft has enormous momentum."

A May 3, 1995 Novell Employee Survey: "48% of employees originally hired at WordPerfect are thinking about quitting."

From December 23, 1995 email from Bruce Brerton regarding Quattro Pro developers quitting: "15 additional people submitted their resignations. All (except 1) will be going to Oracle. From a development standpoint, this leaves us with just 2 people."

Mr. Tulchin said that the Novell suite could not get released until Quattro Pro was complete.

He showed an August 3, 1994 email from Ad Rietveld regarding Novell/WordPerfect/Quattro Pro Unification Plan: "Increase resources on internationalizing Quattro Pro for faster time to market support for localized versions."

Another email dated February 2, 1995 which Mr. Tulchin pointed out is 6 months later: "Quattro Pro folks still working on international version of Quattro Pro 6.0. Expect to finish that by end of March and then will begin on next version of Quattro Pro."

Mr. Tulchin said this is 2 months after the namespace extension decision. He says this is still the DOS version they are working on. He said Novell claimed the only reason for the delay was the namespace extension, but here Quattro Pro says it won't be until the end of March before they start on the next version of Quattro Pro, only a few months before Windows 95 comes out.

He showed a chart of market share of office suites for the Windows platform from 1993 to 1996. (Chris: I estimate the data points to be: Microsoft 1993 80%, 1994 81%, 1995 88%, 1996 89%, Borland Office/PerfectOffice 1993 3%, 1994 4%, 1995 5%, 1996 7%).

He said that Microsoft was the first company to come out with a suite and that Novell's office suite was never successful.

Novell contends it's Microsoft's fault they were late, that it was solely Bill Gates' decision on the namespace extension. He claimed that, instead, Novell made bad decisions -- they paid too much (the market indicated that), Novell's products were slow, they were buggy, they were late to market even before the namespace extension.

He said that Microsoft made its decision: not to make the best product for Novell, but to make the best Windows 95 for Microsoft.

According to Novell's theory, if a version of WordPerfect for Windows 95 had been released much earlier than it was, that event would have resulted in a sharp decline in Microsoft Windows popularity.

He says he has a witness, a Microsoft employee, that will say that a WordPerfect employee told him that WordPerfect will be "OK" with Microsoft's decision on the namespace extension.

Mr. Tulchin said there was no complaint from Novell way back then, that they only filed this lawsuit 10 years later. If it was such a big deal, do you think they would have remained silent for these 10 years?

Now let's take a look at what the gang has unearthed from the Comes exhibits. As you'll recall, that case settled early in the trial, but the judge made the exhibits public. So here on Groklaw, we've been plugging away at making them available to the world as text, to make them more easily searchable. The PDFs have numbers, not names, so it was almost impossible to search them before.

The Exhibits:

Here are some exhibits from Comes v. Microsoft that do seem to contradict what was said in Microsoft's opening statement, or at least raise questions that need an answer, and we'll keep adding to the list if new ones are discovered:

1793:

From: Jim Allchin
To: billg; bobmu; bradsi; davidcol; jonl; jonro; mikemap; paulma; richt; steveb; w-clairl
Subject: Customers and Novell
Date: Saturday, September 18, 1993 3:24PM

Reading the PCWeek article about the mud-slinging between Novell and Microsoft on the "black screen of death" again points out the fact that we don't have everyone trained with the same approach to Novell. A lot of people talk to the press and (and customers) and we still aren't giving the "we just want to help customers" message consistently.

Instead, we're hitting back at Novell - in a losing way. That does nothing other than set us up as the bad guys. Novell is playing us and we continue to fall for it. And every time some product manager or exec falls for it, we look like we're fighting with Novell in front of customers. This is very, very bad.

I want to ask you to get everyone to begin and end every discussion/quote with the press dealing with Novell with the same basic message: (take your pick — they're all basically examples of the same general message)

+ "we don't care where or what the problem is, we will work to solve the customer issue"
+ "it doesn't help customers throwing stones between vendors, we're just going to fix the customer problem"
+ "our mission is to work with every company especially Novell with their large marketshare to solve customer problems. We'd be crazy not to work super hard with them."
+ "Pointing fingers is stupid. We will work to Novell and work internally to solve the problems"
+ "Yes, we have a group that competes with Novell on the server, but isn't competition good for customers? Novell support is critical to us because it's critical to customers. We'd be pretty silly not working as hard as we can with Novell on compatibility and interoperability. That's what customers want. Again, we're thinking of customers here. We welcome Novell's competition provided they work with us to help customers."

Novell uses every opportunity that we "lose it" to say something bad against us. "See they really hate us and won't work with us." "We work with everyone. Microsoft works with no one." (Then we get defensive and hit back – exactly the wrong thing to do in my view.)

We MUST get control of this – especially as we move to ship our own NetWare support. We must be able to explain clearly "we just want to solve customer problems". "Of course, we're going to continue working with Novell. We absolutely want their software to run great."

"We also must think of customers and customers are begging us for this support to come directly from us." [we need to put together a strong list of names that we can use here.] "Why else would we invest so much effort in this client (and server) work? We sure won't make any more money) We had to do this for our customers." [we really need to hammer home this last point about it costing us money to do this and we're not getting anything back from it. It is a strong supporting argument about us just trying to help customers.]

Sentiment is against us. We can and MUST turn this around. As we become more aggressive against Novell product and marketing-wise. We must get our mouth in order. The press, etc. is very sketical of us so one slip up and we get set back quite a ways.

This really isn't that hard. If you're going to kill someone there isn't much reason to get all worked up about it and angry – you just pull the trigger. Angry discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger.

jim

It seems to me this would demonstrate at least two things: 1) Novell did complain at the time, contrary to what Microsoft's lawyer reportedly argued; and 2) Microsoft's Jim Allchin wanted to "kill" Novell while pretending to be friendly.

1794:

From: Nathan Myhrvold
To: paulo; craigmu
Subject: FW: Chicago and 3 key areas
Date: Saturday, September 18, 1993 12:11PM
Priority: High

This is interesting with respect to our Chicago MM plan. I presume that much of what we want to do will be in the "power piece".

Nathan

----------
From: Bill Gates
To: bradsi; davidcol; dennisad; paulma
Cc: jimall; mikemap; nathanm; steveb; stevesi
Subject: Chicago and 3 key areas
Date: Saturday, September 18, 1993 7:52AM
Priority: High

Chicago seems to be marching on like a series of army rifles or a series of british highways: M1, M2, M3, M4...

This teutonic aspect of the project is valuable. I am impressed that the machine is rolling - its professional its critical its great. The group should feel very good.However Chicago has to have a soul too. I want to make sure the following 3 areas are handled properly.

1. Ease of use. I want a hard core audit of whether we are eliminating everything we should eliminate. I want a hardcore comparison to the mac on these issues. For example is it easier to add a cdrom? Is it easier to connect to a network printer? Is it easier to use aliases? We have been humiliated on ease of use for so long. Get some mac lovers - not our internal attenuated mac lovers but some real true unblemished mac lovers to really try this stuff and tell us what they think. Get a champion of this area who will ignore the current march of rifles and development saying something is too hard or cant be backward compatible to really audit this thing hardcore and tell us what we are not doing that might make a difference. Where are we better than Macintosh? What happens when a floppy disk gets inserted? This apect of the project is so critical I would slip to get this right.

2. Patents. I raised this issue as a serious issue at one of our reviews. I want to make sure people understand. I want soemthing where anyone doing our APIs or using our formats will infringe on our ideas. I have received nothing on this. I think there are misunderstandings about what can and cant be done. This should be treated seperately but I want to know who the champion is, what the status is. How many patents would a chicago clone on top of Unix violate? If not a lot then I will help you be more creative. What lawyer has been picked to really be your partner in thinking this through in a brilliant way and make sure the documentation is done right? I want to involve some thinking nathan has been sharing with me on this as well so make sure you are communicating with him. In particular I want to do something about patenting .exe format and encrypting drivers.

3. Product partitioning. I am excited about the thinking I have done on this! We want to revenue maximize with this product. I have a very specific plan for this that will have limited but some impact on the product. It is a plan that is good for customers, oems, isvs and Microsoft. Essentially there are 3 places that things can go:
a. The kernel piece
b. The power piece
c. One of the addons.

The kernel piece is basicly only licensed to Oems. It can run Windows applications but it is missing key stuff that the vast majority of Windows users will want. It does not run as fast as a Windows with b. We can license this to oems for somewhat less than the current oem price for DOS + Windows. The simplicty of this product will emphasize the simplicity for a consumer user but only the most simple minded customer would get by with just this piece. We would prefer to err on the side of this piece being too small rather than too big. The code between these 2 pieces will have to mate in a very complex way for technical reasons. The manual for this piece is simple - just enough to let you run a single windows application. It may have its own unique simple shell.

The power piece has to appeal to almost everyone and yet be unique enough that no one will claim to be able to do everything we do in this piece. It will speed things up, it will have the desktop,... it will see to users at retail for something like $79-$99 and we will make sure that almost everyone knows this is a crucial piece for them. We allow OEMS to also buy this piece and bundle it if they want but it is not subject to much volume discount and we are fine if they dont since we understand the retail channel for windows -this would mean the oem fee for just this piece would be around $35-$50. The piece has lots and lots of stuff in it.

Whatever is left over or too big we put on the CD (which needs a spec at some point) as an extra buy option.

I think perhaps a face to face meeting on this last topic is required since its a VERY VERY important topic - hundreds and hundreds of millions are at stake. $/windows has been going down and this is our chance to help everyone at get $/windows to go up at the same time - the power of an innovative approach. Its also a complex topic with lots of implications for oem/retail. We should include steveb in this if he is free.I am ready to meet anytime.

Well. Mr. Myhrvold, now at Intellectual Ventures, in a discussion with Bill Gates, who wanted to make sure APIs were patented, so using them would require infringement: "I want to make sure people understand. I want something where anyone doing our APIs or using our formats will infringe on our ideas. I have received nothing on this. I think there are misunderstandings about what can and cant be done. This should be treated seperately but I want to know who the champion is, what the status is. How many patents would a chicago clone on top of Unix violate? If not a lot then I will help you be more creative."

1797:

Erik Stevenson
___________________

From: Brad Silverberg
To: bobkr; bradsi; jonro; rogersw; toma
Cc: johnlu
Subject: RE: Novell developers
Date: Wednesday, September 22, 1993 7:52AM

paranoia runs deep.

-----------
>From: bobkr
To: bobkr; bradsi; jonro; rogersw; toma
Cc: johnlu
Subject: RE: Novell developers
Date: Tuesday, September 21, 1993 9:47PM

you must be pulling my leg in asking what novell is suspicious about, right?

they think we're out to cheat them. we, of course, did this with wfw (in their eyes). we also haven't given them chicago code, and, we changed nt apis at the last minute and didn't tell them.

in the new novell math, this equals the fact that ms is not a good partner.

note that i didn't say this was logical...

-bobkr

>From itgmsmlbradsi Tue Sep 21 20:04:34 1993
Message-Id: 9309220145.AA19069@itgmsm
From: bradsi
To: bobkr, jonro, rogersw, toma
Cc: johnlu
Subject: RE: Novell developers
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 93 18:45:00 PDT
X-Mailer: Microsoft Mail V3.0

what are they suspicious about? what are their concerns? did they think we'd turn down their offer and we called their bluff?

____________
>>From: Bob Kruger
To: bradsi; jonro; rogersw; toma
Cc: johnlu
Subject: RE: Novell developers
Date: Tuesday, September 21, 1993 4:45PM

I contact Novell following our mtg this afternoon. The gears are turning in Provo.

This guy, Jeff Turner, is a very suspicious hombre. We'll get what we need, but it's going to be time-consuming.

-bobkr

___________
>>> From: Brad Silverberg
To: Bob Kruger; Jonathan Roberts; Rogers Weed; Tom Anderson
Cc: John Ludwig
Subject: FW: Novell developers
Date: Tuesday, September 21, 1993 14:15

Page 503


if we get their free and no strings, we should ship it.

___________
>>>From: Bill Gates
To: bradc; bradsi; jimall
Cc: jonl; paulma
Subject: Novell developers
Date: Tuesday, September 21, 1993 10:39AM

At Agenda Drew Major and Kyle Geiger were present to receive a hindsight award (10 years after the start of a product - charles got one for word and nisho for model 100).

I went up to them and congratulated them. They were super friendly as always. We agreed that the press situation was very bad. The said they totally disagreed with what Mary Burnside said about us mot providing adequate support for NT.

I said when will you make the client side software properly reentrant. Kyle said he was back at work now and was going to focus in on making the client better with Windows. I said only if there stuff was free and with no strings could we ship it. I said in any case we will keep our efforts going. They agreed that made sense.

They said Richard King who is back after 2 years absence is a good guy but that Kyle himself would try and get more technical dialog. I said I didn't know any specifics but that I thought that some of their plans for the client side were overengineering and were guaranteed to create conflicts.

"we also haven't given them chicago code, and, we changed nt apis at the last minute and didn't tell them." Chicago is what Windows 95 was called as it was being developed. So. This is what Novell is complaining about and what Microsoft says didn't happen, or only happened for valid business reasons. But its significance to me is that Microsoft's lawyer at trial reportedly said that the APIs were still in there, and Novell could have used them. But what apparently really happened with NT is that the change was stealth. Novell only found out by having their stuff break. This doesn't prove it happened again with Chicago, only that Microsoft withheld code from Novell, but it's to me a very disturbing email thread. And I can't help but notice that Bill Gates was a participant in this thread.

2266A:

Novell Legal Department Memorandum

To: File
From: Ryan Richards
Date: March 29, 1995
Subject: Spokane Community College Deal with the Devil

The information contained in this memorandum is PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL and is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that dissemination, distribution or copying of this document or communication of its content are prohibited. If you have received this document in error, please immediately notify us so that it can be returned to us. Thank you.

Redacted By Court Order

Comes v. Microsoft

Mark has a good friend at SCC, Stan McDonald, who is one year away from retirement. He told Mark in confidence, that MS had come in and offered SCC free MS software for faculty, students and labs if they would dump WP and quit teaching it in the classes. SCC took the offer. Stan felt bad that SCC had done this deal, but he won't say anything further because he doesn't want to jeopardize his retirement.

Mark doesn't know anyone at SCC who will offer any more help and he is afraid if we do anything based alone on what Stan told him, we would put Stan at risk.

Questions:
1) Is this anti-competitive?
2) Could we get an investigator in to independently verify this information so we would not have to use Stan as a direct source?

This is 1995, note. I love the question: "Is this anti-competitive?" You think? Well, I expect lawyers will be happy to argue it one way and the other and then a third way, if need be. But what do *you* think?

5611:

([Ed: 11-page memo to Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Mike Maples, Pete Higgins, Jon Lazarus from Phillipe Goetschel/Jim Conner/Mark Kroese/Dave Malcom. Dated November 2, 1993, Subject: "Office Friendly Program Update"]

Summary

The objective of the Office Friendly Program is to evangelize some of our most visible IDG features to non-competing ISVs. The intention is to create a MS Office applications 1ook that would make our direct competitors’ applications look different and inconsistent. To date, we have discussed the program preliminarily with 18 software companies of which 15 have shown a high degree of interest. The plan is to invite them to our suite at Comdex and discuss remaining questions and contractual issues with them. We expect to have about 10 contracts signed by early December. By the end of CQl 94 we estimate to have 3-6 "Office Friendly" compliant products in the market. Over the next 12 months we plan to recruit an additional 40 ISVs for the program....

Vendor Eligibility

This program will not be available to any product which competes with MS Office or its component applications. It is only available to products which add value to Office by helping MS create the industry’s only "Super Suite". Participation is offered on a product-by-product basis, so a company which enrolls a non-competing product cannot include Office’s features in a competing application....

Deliverables

The features included in this program are relatively easy to implement, and they require no special technology. The primary deliverables are feature specifications and a copy of Word 6, which will serve as an illustration of the proper implementation. We will also include copies of our toolbar button faces and a copy of our 3D DLL....

Terminating the Program

We believe this program will add value to MS Office, but we have planned for the possibility that it will be terminated in the future. MS will reserve the right to stop selling the Feature Set Licenses at any time, which will prevent new vendors from joining the program. Current participants may continue to use the features indefinitely, but we do not believe this will harm our interests, because their products do not compete with Office. MS will also reserve the right to stop issuing logo licenses and to cancel current licenses upon 30 days notice. Products which are already displaying the logo may continue to do so for 90 days.)

So, when Microsoft's attorney tells the jury that WordPerfect couldn't compete with a complete office suite, I can't help but wonder whether that isn't exactly the point, judging from this email. It appears, to my non-lawyer eyes, like Microsoft was deliberately setting it up that way, so competitors would look like they were not as good. The next exhibit increases my suspicion.

5572:

Some Ideas on Exploiting Product Synergy in Word
Mike Mathieu, Word Program Management, 7/1/93
Introduction

During the past few years, we have been able to steal significant market share away from WordPerfect. An important lesson to learn here is how relatively easy it was for us to do this. It should serve as a warning for Word. In today's market, word processing might be called mission critical, but no specific word processor can be called mission critical. As long as there are low transition barriers, it will be all too easy for a small, new, low- priced competitor to come along, errode prices, and steal business from us.

An important goal in the 3-5 year timeframe is to increase the "mission-criticalness" or Word--at least to the same level that an app like Excel is considered mission critical. In the past, file formats, macros, unique features, and app-specific user interface conventions were all barriers to transition. In today's competitive world we must go far beyond these former barriers and exploit synergy with business system components that will help entrench Word. This document serves as a starting point for the general discussion of how to better entrench Word, and offers some ideas on the potential areas for developing synergy with other produces.

Email Integration

Besides a true word processor, the next most common editor used by the average person is their email editor. If we can make Word so that it can take the place of the email editor, then users will be more satisfied--they get a more feature rich mail editor and it's totally consistent with their word processor--and we will be able to leverage off of the company's choice of email system (a mission critical system) and link it to purchases of Word. Today we don't really integrate any better with MS Mail than somebody like WordPerfect does.

The question then becomes whether we exploit private interfaces in Mail to make this happen, or whether we rely on public interfaces--which our competitors can use for the same purpose. When the email system comes with the OS, this becomes a bigger problem. One possible idea is that this extra level of integration only comes when using the distinct Microsoft Mail product, as opposed to the mail client built into Windows (Is the current plan still to ship two separate mail clients?)

Some specifics to consider are:

  • Using Capone's custom forms feature to register certain Word templates as a form (Who handles textizing?)
  • Use Capone's (more robust?) routing features, rather than DAD app-specific routing.
  • Using Word's File Open dialog to go into the LMS file and open any Word documents, or even preview file attachments in other previewable formats. In general, be able to use the LMS as a regular extension of the file system. e.g. Find File, links, Save As, Move, Create Directory, etc.

Forms Integration

There are several plans circulating around now about ways to take advantage of Word's forms and layout capabilities as a component of a more generalized enterprise forms and document database system. The idea is to provide some unified front end browsing tool that lets you get into a database, and then use a variety of forms tools like Access, VB, or Word, to display the data in the most appropriate manner.

It is interesting to note that Microsoft Eforms really has no special level of integration with Word or other desktop apps. We'd have to be able to create a new positioning, perhaps based upon the notion of a document database, where Word could serve as one of the value-added forms components for this mission critical document sharing system. (In this sense, Word would be a superior competitor to the front end document forms client that Notes provides. It would be up to another group to come up with the approriate backend system to compete.) We'd want Word to be able to tie document fields into backend databases, provide features like lookups, and some sort of security or data protection scheme.

Shell Integration

The idea here is that once a user has bought into Windows, aside from the ability to run other Windows app, the shell itself is probably the most important component of their user experience. (This in itself should serve as a warning to the Chicago team. Too big of a change would lower the barriers for competing shells.) Having Word integrate perfectly with the shell would give us an advantage over those word processors who didn't integrate as well. As in the email case, this area of integration is not able to provide our apps with a unique advantage that we could sustain. As soon as we integrated nicely with the shell, another app could some [sic] along and do the same thing. This would just extend the feature wars into integration feature wars, rather than making Word more mission critical. (Of course, if we're in the lead in the integration feature wars, this is a way that we could stay ahead of competition without having so much obvious "feature bloat" or reduced ease of learning.)

Some obvious targets for shell integration includes making MS Write's file format identical to Word's file format; providing document previewing filters; OLE drag and drop scrap support; OLE Automation support; an Explorer handler dll to provide enhanced browsing into components of a Word document (e.g. master document pieces.)

Word as an Online Document Writer

Particularly with the growth of email, the use of rich online documents is likely to grow significantly in the next five years. This area talks about a set of related ideas like making Word into a replacement for the Multimedia Viewer, or making Word into the authoring system for Help files, and perhaps even a display engine for help files.

Help Files

Today there is a whole cottage industry of products either built around Word or around other word processors to allow someone to easily create help files. The manual process is tedious, and so software developers look to these tools to ease the process of creating the help files. Creating a help file today requires a RTF file with special tags to indicate specific objects. This file is then put through a help compiler, finally producing a .hlp file that the help engine can use. Since help files are mission critical to software products, we could make Word a perfect help content editor, as well as a great viewer. Hlp format could be a standard output format by combining the processing of the help compiler with the interfaces of Word's export converters. Having Word read hlp files would help solidify the hlp format as the standard format for online documents (do we want that, or do we want .doc files to be this standard?) Some additional issues to consider are:

  • Would we stop improving or selling the Help Compiler?
  • Would ISV's balk at the idea of having to buy Word to make help files?
  • Would customers want Word to support hlp files, or just want Word to be able to easily create documents with easy popups, secondary windows, hypertext jumps, and per- page layouts?

Multimedia Viewer

The notion of using Word as a replacement for the Multimedia Viewer implies some pretty big changes in the way we sell and distribute Word. For instance, today we give away MM Viewer in order to sell the content. We've never done anything like that with Word.

If we could come up with a business model that allowed us to give away some viewer-like version of Word, that could help make Word's document format the de facto standard for online information. (There are tons of CD's and online services around today, and they all use different formats for the data. We need to think about potential advantages to owning the standard format for online documents--besides the fact that Word itself would be the best content editor, and that Word would have the highest fidelity display of that content.)

We could perhaps invest in a model similar to that of Folio Views, where there is a full version of Views used to create the content. Then, individual users can use Views Lite to view the content and make edits to their own private "shadow" file (this is essentially the same thing as a "changes" file that I've described before in relation to replication.) Perhaps this is a separate product that just happens to be very similar to Word proper?

Standard Format for Information Distribution

This is an overriding theme in several of the sections discussed in this document. By providing a standard format, Word will also become the standard authoring tool, as well as the standard browser and content delivery platform. Word, by typing to workflow, and document production systems, will become a standard tool for the distribution of information--in effect, becoming the modern day, GUI replacement for the old standard ASCII file. This would include higher end, online information sources like e-books and e-libraries.

We should also consider how Word might fit into our plans for an online information service. Could Word serve as the standard information browsing front end, and allow for a textizing engine that provides for users without Word?

Tight Integration with a Search Engine

The search engine in Cairo is one of the focal points of the product as a step towards information at your fingertips. We need to think about ways that we can let Word integrate better with either the Cairo search engine, or third party engines, to further support Word's position as the leading front end for browsing online information.

This should include a standard UI (same as Cairo, or more value added? How do we differentiate Word?) for searching and navigating the information hierarchy, and a smoothly integrated interface for viewing the information.

Hyper-integration with Excel and Office

It's not clear what this means in terms of features, but the idea is to use (private?) interfaces between Word and Excel (and the rest of the Office?) to provide a tremendous level of integration. This might be describing the Integrated Office, or it might just be extensions to the apps in the current Office. Some things to think about are:

  • Use Excel engine to provide a great Table object in Word.
  • Take more advantage of system support for messaging. (Distributed processing? App-to-app communication?)
  • Implement commands which take advantage of features in other applications.
  • Implement features as objects or shared components so other apps can use them.
  • Complete support for Object Basic
  • OLE 3.0 (whatever we need it to be)
  • Platform (or Microsoft) standard tabular and textual interchange formats
  • Component architecture taken to it's logical extreme (explosion in variety of shared components.)
  • Consistency with object oriented shell and support for OFS. (Cairo)
  • Native drawing tools shared

HyperIntegration and an extreme component architecture could have a significant impact on how we market our software as a company. This will need a lot more thought as the time approaches.

The document comments on Microsoft's success in "stealing significant market share away from WordPerfect", then suggests tighter integration with other programs or functions such as email and forms so that Word itself does not suffer the same fate as WordPerfect when faced with another competitor. (You can find particulars of how the market looked before Microsoft stole market share away from WordPerfect in this exhibit [PDF] from 1989.) The section in "Hyper-integration with Excel and Office" on page 3 of #5572 specifically suggests the possibility of using private interfaces between Office applications to improve "integration". So "synergy" was a deliberate strategy, a business model.

2452:

From: Todd Millett

To: Internet:novsup@microsoft.com

Date: 1/10/96 2:39pm

Subject: Windows 95 Group Policy Support

We are trying to get group policies to work with our client. However, there is no documented method for our client to pass group information to POLEDIT.EXE. When we looked at the GROUPPOL.INF and GROUPPOL.REG files, it became obvious that there is some interface that we are not aware of, which has not been documented.

The GROUPPOL.REG file sets a value under the Network Provider key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesNWNP32NetworkProvider] the value is:
'GroupFen'='GROUPPOL.DLL,NWGetUserGroups'

I assume this tells GROUPPOL.DLL which entry point to call to get the group and user information.

How can we implement this? Where is it documented? Is this function supposed to implemented in the Network Provider? It's not documented anywhere in the NetWork Provider spec.

Any documentation you could give us on the interface between POLEDIT.EXE, GROUPPOL.DLL, and the Network Provider DLL would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Todd Millett

Novell, Inc.

Again, note the date is January of 1996 and it's a Novell guy complaining about missing documentation. So Novell did complain. And what was this person provided in response to this email? Judging from the next exhibit, I'd guess nothing.

Update: It turns out there were complaints prior to the above email, because Millett emailed Microsoft more than once, beginning in July of 1995, and back then he was promised materials, but then he wrote again in August of 1995, and then again in the January 1996 email, so apparently no satisfaction was achieved by then. Here's the exhibit with the fuller thread, #2375:

CONFIDENTIAL

From: Todd Millett
To: Internet: novsup@microsoft.com
Date: 8/2/95 4:10pm
Subject: Windows 95Password Provider Header

To whom it may concern:

Below is the text of 2 messages sent previously regarding header files and libraries for implementing a Windows 95 Password Provider. To date, we have had no response, but we still need this information. Can someone please respond with the information we need?

Thanks,

Todd Millett
Novell, Inc.

***************************************************************
*******

We have the 950 DDK, and in the network.doc file, located on that CD, these same constants are mentioned, as are the API's we need to implement: PPGetPasswordStatus and PPChangePassword. There is a whole chapter (Chapter 6) on this subject, which contains the same information that was in the "Utilizing the Windows 95 Password Control Panel" doc. It is also well documented in the NETWORK.HLP file on the DDK CD.

In short, we have everything but the headers and libraries to actually implement this functionality. If these constants and API's have been removed, why are they so well documented? Also, if they have been removed, how do we integrated password changes with Windows 95?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Todd Millett
Novell, Inc.

>>> yvesm 07/20/95 11:31pm >>>
Todd
I believe the constants PS_ONOFF, PWDCHANGE_MASTERPWD_NOTIFY have been removed as well as the APIs you are referring about. The document "Utilizing the windows 95 password has not been updated yet.
Also you'll find the latest files in the 950 DDK that we sent to Novell last week. However, I'll make sure you receive the updated version of the document on how to the windows 95 password.

Thanks
Yves Michali

CONFIDENTIAL
____________
From: Todd Millett [SMTP:TODD_MILLETT@novell.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 1995 9:56 AM
To: 'novsup@microsoft.com
Cc: Carla Heesch@novel1.com; WIN95@nove1l.com
Subject: Password Provider constants

We are trying to implement a Windows 95 password provider for our Netware client. We have the document "Utilizing the Windows 95 Password Control Pane1", which documents the API's we need to support. However, we can't find the various constants which are referenced (such as PS_ONOFF, PWDCHANGE_MASTERPWD_NOTIFY), nor the API's themselves, referenced in any header file we have. We have looked in NETSFI.H and NETMPR.H, but they are not there.

Could you please direct us to the proper header and library we should be using for these calls, or send them if they are not included in the standard SDK or DDK?

Thanks,

NL2 0003819

NWA 000412


Todd Millet
Novell, Inc


CC: WIN95

CONFIDENTIAL

So someone at Novell did complain.

1909:

From: Greg Whitten [gregw]
Sent: Monday, November 22, 1993 10:51 AM
To: Bob Atkinson; Bob Muglia; Jim Allchin
Cc: Mike Maples; Paul Maritz; Tony Williams
Subject: RE: WP, OpenDoc

We have to take the hard line. We can't give OpenDoc even an inch as easy runtime interface to OLE 2.0. We don't want to lose control of the API that ISV's are writing to. MFC is a special case since it belongs to Microsoft. If we say that OpenDoc is an OK runtime, then they will use that position to get ISV's to write to that interface plus they now get cross- platform benefits, etc.

I did not understand the part of your comment about the OpenDoc interfaces not being new and by implication different from OLE 2.0. Is Apple using OLE 2.0 interfaces or are they wrapping them?

Three more things.

Nagel has been jerking us around. We should be taking a harder line against Apple, IBM, and Novell and especially with any ISV's in their coalition. I.e., an ISV's participation in CIL could disqualify them from OLE pre-release information. We should let WP know that in uncertain terms along with all the other hard messages we given them.

We should start up the vaporware PR campaign for OLE 3.0 (1994) and OLE 4.0 (1996). I would like to see a brief feature comparison of OpenDoc vs. OLE 2.0. I have not seen a proposal for an OLE 3.0 feature set. Tony and Bob should put together an initial list for distribution.

I suggested quite a long time ago that we should do an OLE assessment day for OLE 2.0 usage within the company. This needs to happen for the compound document and automation parts. We need to get clear feedback about OLE 2.0 from our internal clients and what should be added, fixed to increase the quality of our implementations, and to spread the understanding about what can be done with all the OLE 2.0 interfaces and its object model. I don't know of a better way for DAD to state their opinions and team about OLE and for us to take the feedback and make OLE better. I don't have anyone to set this up. Someone else should do it. This should happen sooner than later. It should have happened before the PDC so that we could be more concrete about where OLE would be going.

From: Bob Atkinson
To: Bob Muglia; Jim Allchin
Cc: Greg Whitten; Mike Maples; Paul Maritz; Tony Williams
Subject: RE: WP, OpenDoc
Date: Mon, Nov 22, 1993 9:44AM

I still think there is a less hardcore position that has a lot of value in causing churn inside OpenDoc. I think that in writing it off entirely at this stage you are being too black and white about it. That we'd be so summary with WP and yet so wishy-washy with Apple as we are presently doing is beyond me. Apple is clearly out to get us, and there's nothing that will disuade them, while it's still plausble that WP is just afraid of us.

| We need to be very careful about following a direction of
| using opendoc to build OLE apps. Opendoc (apparently)
| defines a different set of interfaces. It is critical that we
| maintain ownership of the interfaces and not code this to
| Opendoc.

Absolutely true: we *must* retain ownership of interface definitions. Despite their hype, though, most of OpenDoc. is largely not new interfaces. Yes, they have a couple of features that we don't have, and to retain control I was proposing (sorry, didnt make that clear in the last mail) that as part of what we we do we'd set up and define "OLE" interfaces as the interoperability standard for these features. Theres only a couple of 'em.

| Further, I am convinced from my conversation with Mark Ericson
| that Opendoc will fail, at least on Windows. They are much
| further away then they claim and it is not at all clear that
| they can get OLE interop working without our help. Without
| OLE interop, they are toast. We have significant momentum
| with OLE, all we need to do is execute on our deliveries and
| continue our ISV evangelism.

I know that it will come late. But complete failure, I'm not at all so sure. Not at all. Witness the amazing amount of reception that a piece of trash like SOM gets. 60% solutions can still be a big headache

| Specifically, I do not want to begin any conversations about
| merging opendoc and OLE.

I agree. This would be a total mistake. But this is not at all what I'm suggesting. Nobody claimed that we merged OLE and MFC, for example.

| We are in a position of strength.
| If we execute on the base we've established, we are well
| positioned to maintain our leadership position for many years
| to come. Screwing around with opendoc can only hurt us and
| the ISVs who have followed our lead with OLE.

If we "screw around" then we've failed. Indeed we must do this without compromising OLE's leadership. But if we offer and sell a position that is both technically truthful and socially palatable to WP, we can end up with them getting on board in just the place we want them: as solid supporters of OLE.

| Instead, I think we need to follow-up with Wordperfect but
| from a much more hardcore position. Although I need to get
| more details on the politics of the situation from doughe and
| crew, I want Wordperfect to understand that we consider
| Opendoc as a competitor to MS Systems. We will not help them

Indeed it certainly is a systems competitor today. But their mispositioning is the point: I think I'm offering a way that we can be a lot less confrontational ("OpenDoc is fine, we just think you've haven't understood where it fits in") even if in the end the two approaches end up with the same actual effect.

| make Opendoc work. They also need to understand that if they
| pursue bento as their storage format, they will have a
| significant disadvantage in the Cairo world where docfiles are
| transparently converted to native OFS storage.

Curious: do we yet have any real numbers on the performance advantage that, say, Word6 would see?

| I essentially told Mark all of that when I saw him at Comdex,
| but I want to follow-up with his management so that it is
| clear that wordperfect has gotten the message.

Bob

"I want Wordperfect to understand that we consider Opendoc as a competitor to MS Systems. We will not help them." I'd say that's clear as a bell. Jim Allchin is a recipient of this thread. This is late 1993, November, so this is just prior to the Novell purchase, but it shows their policy at the time, which likely continued thereafter. "It is critical that we maintain ownership of the interfaces and not code this to Opendoc." Ownership of the interfaces. There it is in black and white. And it's talking about WordPerfect, not NetWare.

And take a look at this next one, which although it is about DR DOS, not WordPerfect, shows that a Microsoft employee said, in 1994, that the company apparently did deliberately code incompatibilities to thwart rivals.

1999:

Erik Stevenson

________________________

From: Rick Segal
To: Bradsi
Subject: Dos & Windows
Date: Wednesday, January 26, 1994 10:41PM

Comments?

>R

--- Forwarded Message ---

#: 107191 (P) S4/HOT!/NOT! Software (CANOPUS)
  26-Jan-94 13:37:48
Sb: #107063-MSFT's Software
Fm: Tony Ingenoso[PSP] 73764,3632
To: Rick Segal[Microsoft] 76276,2706

>

>> Microsoft does not code incompatabilities into their products.

Tread lightly here Rick. We just discovered some code in Windows whose sole purpose seems to be to bonk DR-DOS.

It has to do with scanning low memory for the string "CON " to see if its found 10 times (the code is buggy too BTW).

This bonks any OS where the internal tables have been relocated above the 512K mark (like DR-DOS could do).

While considering a similar option we ran into this "feature". We worked around it and Windows works just fine...

Tony

The code's sole purpose was to "bonk" DR DOS. He found it "while considering a similar option." Novell is claiming that Microsoft bonked it with regard to its other code, WordPerfect, too, and in this same time period. Do you find that hard to believe? Of course, a trial is about proof and a decision will be made based on the evidence offered at the trial itself. But looking at these exhibits certainly tilts the field, to me anyway. Feel free to find more exhibits. Many eyeballs make the work easier.

Update:

Here's another, 2382:

CONFIDENTIAL

From: Brad Young
To: TOBY COREY, WILLY DONAHOO, Fortune.SJF-MAIL1.MEPST...
Date: 8/10/95 8:03 am
Subject: Client32 Beta 1 issue

This is a brief note to inform you of a possible delay with Client32 Beta 1.

Issue: There may be a possible delay with Beta 1, due to a compatibility problem between Windows 95 gold code, and Client32.

Fidelity Investments notified Novell yesterday that after installing the "released code" version of Windows 95, Novell's Windows 95 (Alpha II) client no longer functioned. Engineering's latest available version of Windows 95 is BUILD950.RC4 (Build 950, release candidate 4). Fidelity has a later version that RC4, which does not function with the client.

Richard Jones has made multiple attempts to obtain the latest code from both John Ludwig and Yves Mitchelli (sp) at Microsoft, but his messages have not yet been returned.

Engineering will obtain a version RC6 (release candidate 6) on Thursday 8/10, and will begin testing with this version to identify the incompatibility. Engineering will also contact Fidelity to verify that the version they are seeing problems with is RC6.

If the issue cannot be readily identified and resolved, then the Beta 1 date could be negatively impacted.

I will post you a status of this issue Friday Morning.

CC: PRV-MAILS.RICHARD JONES, JWERNER, HUB-FORTUNE2.SFO ...

CONFIDENTIAL

Update 2:

Here's another email thread, from 1995, which includes Bill Gates, in which upper management folks discuss how to deal with the Internet. Gates views it as a threat to their position of power, specifically controlling APIs.

5704:

From: paulma
Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 1995 8:41 AM
To: bens; johnlu
Subject: FW: Internet (aka Web Windows)

----------
From: Rick Rashid
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 1995 6:04 PM
To: paulma
Cc: danli
Subject: FW: Internet (aka Web Windows)

Here's the mail I referred to. BTW, Dan Ling and I brainstormed some more after our meeting. We came up with some additional ideas and we're both going to think some more about it this evening. One area that this "Web Windows" could excel in would be in providing "shared" application spaces. It would be very possible for a server to send its graphics data more than one user simultaneously and get input from either or both. This would be a way to provide support for interactive shared applications which now are next to impossible on the net.

Maybe a brainstorming session with some key people would be in order?

-Rick

----------
From: Rick Rashid
To: Bill Gates; Craig Mundie
Cc: Nathan Myhrvold; Russell Siegelman
Subject: RE: Internet
Date: Tuesday, April 11, 1995 3:01PM

OK - Here is a crazy idea (which frankly has nothing much to do with ACT but does address the question of Internet and standards):

As an example of Bill's point, Dan Ling showed me this morning that Satan (the new Internet "demon" :-)) actually uses HTML as a user interface. Other software may begin to do this. Its easy. It produces a reasonable looking machine independent UI rather quickly. Its dangerous from our perspective of wanting to make and preserve valuable standards. There are plenty of other examples.

On the other hand, the way people are increasingly using HTML as an "interactive" network interface is extremely limiting. Today HTML interaction is largely limited to point and click URL selection and forms. While an amazing amount can be done that way, it is extremely simplistic and not very satisfying to someone who wants a really interactive network application.

At the same time, we have the existing systems like Citrix, JoshK's work, etc where the output of a Window's system gets transported across a network and displayed -- the moral equivalent of an X-Terminal. These systems have the advantage that they provide all of the richness of Windows interfaces remotely. For relatively uncomplicated things (such as Word Processors) the Citrix solution can work well even at relatively low 14.4 and 28.8 dialup rates -- at least that's what they claim. Certainly ISDN or direct Internet access can be even better.

So here's the idea: make Windows the standard interactive application interface for the Internet.

A URL could point to either a running or explicitly spawned application with the protocol being a GDI-based protocol. The playback could be accomplished either through an explicit playback engine embedded in a browser (on a Mac or Unix system, for example) or directly through Window's actual GDI using a pretty approach. You could go as far as the Citrix people have in providing a complete remote "virtual windows machine" through your browser (the Citrix people claim to have experimented with this) or -- more likely -- you would provide a more special purpose way for individual applications to have their display windows mapped remotely. We could either develop this technology ourselves or license work others have

ATTORNEYS EYES ONLY


done (say Citrix) as a starting point.

However it was done -- and there are a number of options -- the net effect would be to encourage application developers easily adapt their Windows apps (e.g. multimedia reference titles) directly for the Internet and it would encourage the user community to use Windows as the standard for interactive network applications. NT provides a number of security hooks that could be taken advantage of to allow "secure" applications to operate on a server and this could itself be viewed as a NT advantage. The browser software would be distributed for free. MSN would provide equivalent services (perhaps just through the Internet) using its own NT servers, etc. I would certainly be a way to get out in front in a new area -- interactive internet applications and services -- with a strategy which maximizes use of our existing resources.

-Rick

----------
| From: Bill Gates
| To: Craig Mundie
| Cc: Nathan Myhrvold; Rick Rashid; Russell Siegelman
| Subject: Internet
| Date: Monday, April 10, 1995 3:00AM
|
| Message-Id:
| X-Mailer: Microsoft Mail V3.0
| X-Ms-Attachment: WINMAIL.DAT 957 00-00-1980 00:00
|
|
| Given that we are looking at the Internet destroying our position as the
| setter of standards and APIs do you see things we should be doing to use
| ACT assets to avoid this?
|
| I admit I find it hard to focus lots of resources on trials and things
| when the Internet is taking away our power every day and will have
| eroded it irretrievably by the time broadband is pervasive on the course
| we are on right now.
|
|

ATTORNEYS EYES ONLY


From: johnlu
Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 1995 9:04 AM
To: bens; paulma; adamr
Subject: RE: Internet (aka Web Windows)

lots of overlap with conferencing too. we are already signed up to do the work to remote a window to another machine in both point-to-point and multipoint scenarios. and the office team is going to modify office to take greater advantage of that over time. we should certainly make sure that conference objects can be embedded in web places and vice versa. this would make every windows app today instantly "internet capable" which is a nice benefit.

we should focus on some scenarios with mass appeal so that this model becomes pervasive. 1:1 conferences aren't going to turn the internet on its head, the web is not a 1:1 place. we need to think thru how we do 1:many scenarios. for instance if I connect to the ms web page, maybe i see a list of free office training sessions. i can join one, and on my screen i get [to] see a live demo/walkthru of some office scenarios, with a voiceover using either conferencing voice support or robg's progressive audio stuff.

So, Gates viewed APIs as a form of power. When he is on the stand talking about the email and why he removed things Novell felt it needed, I'd want to ask him to explain this: "Given that we are looking at the Internet destroying our position as the setter of standards and APIs do you see things we should be doing to use ACT assets to avoid this?"

Update 3:

Here is an interesting exhibit, where a Microsoft employee asks if he can make an undocumented Windows call, and he specifically states that while Microsoft publicly claimed that there were no "special hooks" available to Microsoft Apps Division programmers that were not publicly available, in fact "they do".

141:

>we are currently working out the details of this new policy. You will receive information about this in the near future.
Roxanna

From markwa Tue Aug 29 17:03:20 1989
To: davidw
Cc: jonm
Subject: DefineHandleTable
Date: Thu Nov 07 16:40:01 PDT 1991

David, it sounds like you're the guy to answer the question below.

>From jonm Tue Aug 29 17:03:22 1989
To: markwa
Subject: DefineHandleTable
Date: Tue Aug 19 17:00:30 1989

Hi . . . could I ask another question about Windows? This question is indirectly related to the SDK, but if you think someone else would be more appropriate to ask, please pass it on...

The question is: do you think it is feasible to document "DefineHandleTable" for ISV programmers to use?

"DefineHandleTable" is an undocumented Windows call which is used by the Apps Division. It allows great speedups when using moveable memory, because it permits the program to find the current address of a moveable segment (or detect it it's paged out in EMM) without having to make a Windows call.

I am designing features in Microsoft C which will allow the Apps Division to use our standard retail tools, while increasing the level of support for ISV Windows programming. One of the options I am evaluating is to make a system using "DefineHandeTable" available to ISV's. (There are other good options as well.)

I am not sure about this since Microsoft's public position has been that Apps Division programmers do not have special hooks into Windows, when, in fact, they do. Therefore, it might be embarrassing to document "DefineHandleTable" at this late stage, as part of a system for ISV's to use. Could you give me some feedback on whether this is an option?

Thanks,

Jonathan

CONFIDENTIAL

From markwa Wed Aug 30 08:20:48 1989
To: davidl
Subject: Re: Floating Point Exception App
Date: Thu Nov 07 16:40:01 PDT 1991

WinMail 1.21 brucen Thu Nov 07 16:36:32 1991Page: 31

What is so interesting about this email thread, aside from showing that Microsoft has not always been truthful in public statements, according to this employee, who states he was aware of the duplicitous public position, but the dates. The question was sent in 1989, but it was responded to in November of 1991.

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