TV-PGMay 26, 1998: Bored with the current crop of tech-sector lawsuits? Not to worry-- we've got another one, as another would-be cloner sues Apple for shutting them down. Meanwhile, Microsoft's room to maneuver may be seriously cramped by all the lawyers in the room, and the InfiniteOS resurfaces, source code and all...
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Living In Court (5/26/98)
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The Clone Wars are over, but the lawsuits linger on. Just to make sure that Microsoft doesn't hog all the fun of litigation, yet another lawsuit has just been shoveled on top of Apple to keep things interesting. This time it's some outfit called Panorama Designs, Inc., charging that ex-cloner Motorola broke their contract by exiting the Mac clone market after contracting Panorama to produce and sell Mac OS compatibles. Panorama is also suing Apple for allegedly having "advised, persuaded, counseled, and/or coerced Motorola to breach said contract." The gritty details are all in the Business Journal of San Jose.

No word on just how much Panorama hopes to get from Apple, but the Motorola suit is "only" for $13.5 million, so we don't think it's for much. (Certainly nothing like that laughable Imatec ColorSync suit, which seeks over $1 billion in damages. Hey Imatec, just one question: Where do you buy your crack?) Unsurprisingly, as is their wont, Apple "did not return phone calls requesting a comment." What's really funny is the article's statement that "a Motorola representative was unaware of the lawsuit." Now that's keeping on top of current events...

Panorama isn't the only would-be cloner suing Apple over the end of the Clone Era. You may recall PowerTools, the Umax sublicensee who thought really different by sidestepping Apple's "no G3 clone certification" policy; if we recall correctly, PowerTools were the first to ship Apple-certified 604e-based systems with Apple-certified G3 upgrade cards preloaded-- thus producing the world's first G3 Mac clones by driving through a contractual loophole the size of a Mack truck. PowerTools is suing Apple for allegedly squelching their legally-valid G3 clone operation by constraining the supply of components to PowerTools. How's that for anticompetitive practices? If those charges are true, apparently Steve's slogan at the time of that maneuver was "Think Microsoft."

 
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Choking on Red Tape (5/26/98)
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If you're looking for an interesting analysis of just how much the antitrust actions against Microsoft may affect their business, look no further than this article in Inter@ctive Week Online. It draws fascinating comparisons between the current Microsoft investigation and the antitrust investigation of IBM several decades ago. The most dangerous enemy in Microsoft's struggle may not be the Justice Department, but rather the morale problems that ensue when suddenly everything your employees do and say is being closely monitored by the legal department of your own company.

In IBM's case (which dragged on for thirteen years), they had to set up a department which did nothing but work with the lawyers, organizing the millions of documents that were evidence in the case and explaining technical details so that an appropriate legal defense could be built. Lawyers had to monitor what used to be informal meetings to ensure that damaging statements were avoided. More lawyers had to approve the content of memos to verify that it couldn't damage their case. All in all, things got pretty sticky over at IBM-- and the same phenomenon may occur at Microsoft. After all, the DoJ was able to dig up a ton of incriminating evidence in Microsoft memos and email messages, so it seems likely that the lawyers are going to want to be filtering all information exchange from now on to prevent further damage.

It's easy to assume that Microsoft is so big and rich that it can absorb just about any kind of trouble thrown its way, but once lawyers start dictating what gets said at meetings and in memos, there's a nasty layer of complexity thrown on top of what would otherwise be simple proceedings. It's fascinating to think that the only thing that can slow Microsoft's momentum might be the weight of its own lawyers.

 
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Infinitely Intriguing (5/26/98)
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Hey, who remembers the InfiniteOS flap that arose several months ago? Cache Computing's "alternative operating system" for the Power Macintosh hardware platform caused quite a buzz when news of the project made the rounds a few months ago. There was a ruckus when first several people claimed the whole thing was a hoax; then that ruckus grew into a full-fledged brouhaha when a few hapless users reported that running the "early version" of InfiniteOS from Cache Computing's web site led to hard disk corruption. After that, Cache Computing denied that InfiniteOS was just a Trojan horese, reiterated that it was in fact a real OS, and stated that it would gain a graphical user interface sometime in March; that was the last we'd heard until now.

Well, InfiniteOS is back with a vengeance. The Cache Computing folks have decided that they simply don't have all the time necessary to continue the project on their own, so they're posting the source code and inviting everyone else to help. There's no doubt in our minds that InfiniteOS is a real project that just kind of stalled out due to lack of time, but now that the source code is being released, it has the potential to grow into a really interesting community project. Heck, Linux probably started out pretty small, too, we imagine. (As for the disk corruption charges, we're not technically savvy enough to know one way or the other, though we certainly invite any programmers to examine the source code to see if anything in there could possibly have caused it. We consider it a non-issue at this point.)

In other "alternate OS" news, we're all still anxiously awaiting release 1.0 of COS, das WünderOS from German development house Omega. You may recall that COS includes such features as full B2-class security, complete compatibility with Mac applications, four times the speed of the Mac OS, a microkernel architecture, zero system crashes, Java support, symmetric multiprocessing, and support for all Macs and clones with 68030's and higher-- all in 4MB of RAM and 12 MB of disk space. It will also be free to try for 20 days just by downloading it over the web, will cost $99 U.S. to buy, and has a firm release date of, er, last November. And gee, Omega's web site seems to have vanished from the face of the DNS world last time we checked. What do you suppose that means? You guessed it-- they must have upgraded their web server to COS, and its B2-class security is preventing anyone from connecting to it (or even finding it). That's some serious security! (You didn't think we were going to call it a hoax, now, did you?)

 
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