RE: [TCLUG:1056] Another nifty TSR from the Caldera anittrust suit

["Eric Hillman" <ehillman@cccu.com>]

> > ... MS's
> anticompetitive sabotage
> > job on DR-DOS, QEMM etc.  Nicely ties in with some of the stuff
> talked about
>
> Sorry for the non-linux related message, I will keep it short. I don't
> see this as being anticompetitive or sabotage, necessarily. Another way
> of viewing the situation is that Microsoft has only certified their
> windows software to "work" with their own DOS and IBM's PC DOS.

	I thought that as well, except why then would they deny having such an
error message in their software?  (MS execs claimed the whole thing was "an
urban legend".)  Why would they take such pains to conceal that it was in
there?  Most Windows error messages are plainly readable if you take a hex
editor to the executables or DLLs (I've modified them myself on several
occasions) -- these were apparently encrypted or otherwise made difficult to
read.
	More significant than the DR-DOS "warning" (which sounds to be in the same
class as the apocalyptic Java warnings on NT4 - FUD, to be sure, but mostly
harmless) is the rather more sinister Win3.0 QEMM error -- if you had QEMM
installed (instead of MS's EMM386), Windows 3.0 gave you an error message
and refused to work, but if you changed the name of the QEMM executable to
something else, it worked perfectly.  A warning message alone would be
defendable, but not a total refusal to operate in the presence of a
competitor's product.
	Anyways, this certainly isn't one of MS's more outstanding sins, but I
thought it might be of interest to those who were at the conference.