On Thu, 14 Sep 2000, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
> Yes Andre, they did, they accussed me of knowingly conspiring with Linus
> to provide full NTFS on Linux based on the email you and I sent to
Wait, this was a proposal of mine to MicroSoft to grant permission
development in a clean room model that only used white papers or other
stuff that could be extracted passively.
I alos pointed out that this simple act of allowing open development of a
public NTFS would help them blow holes in the DOJ monopoly issue.
> them. The agreements they signed with us were very liberal, and allowed
> us to create any tools and NTFS stuff we wanted, there were no
> non-competes, or anything to stop us from providing stuff on Linux.
If they leave the barn door open, not all the cows come home.
> What they alleged was a belief that since we were going open source and
> supporting Linux NTFS users, they believed it was impossible for me to
> keep a "chinese wall" in place in my head between their IP and Linux
This is because they have small brains and do not understand divided IP.
> IP. A very valid example of the legal theory of the "doctrine of
> inevitable disclosure".
>
> But I must admit, in fact what's going on here is that by pulling the
> open source NDS for W2K off the table, I renigged on a "faustian"
> agreement to open source NDS on W2K. This was compounded by the fact
> that we released the MANOS sources with a complete NT/W2K PE and DLL
> loader (which we wrote "clean room", one of their old tricks). They
> found this very irritating. They were quite unconcerned about our NTFS
> work on Linux until we posted MANOS and announced an Open Source
> NetWare.
You have to hate it when what goes around comes around!
> We've started our "clean room" NTFS core and I've spent some late nights
> working on it, and we doubt they will take any action since we dissolved
> the agreement. The last thing they need is for me to take the stand and
> testify just what kind of deals they offered to get us to leave Novell
> in 1997 and divide the NetWare markets by using the "Linux IP
> Laundry-Mat" to launder Novell's NDS for their consumption (Oh! Look
> what we found on the internet and downloaded today!).
Oh, where is your sence of ententainment.
You would have the backing of GEEKS with GUNS if it go messy, at least
this GEEK.
> NDS would be a useless wart on the rump of Linux. It's for managing
> large numbers of file and print servers, not internet/intranet servers
> like Linux. Linux already has vastly superior internet directory
> capabilities.
Maybe they will live/die and learn ...
Cheers,
Andre Hedrick
The Linux ATA/IDE guy
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