Gates Takes Stand

Bill Gates took the stand today in a trial involving unfair marketing practices from Microsoft going back to its Windows 95 days. According to Novell, it was forced to sell-off WordPerfect for over $1 billion loss after Microsoft refused to carry it as a Win95 application. Gates insists the product was not capable and that was Novell's fault.

But Novell says it should have been given some forward advance, such as a peek at the features and source code Windows 95 had in plan. Without those, how was it able to know what kind of product it was meant to be making? Novell counters that Gates actively plotted against the software because WordPerfect was too good.

In the time since, WordPerfect's share of the market dropped to about 10% from a whopping 50% as Microsoft Office suite applications took hold.

© C Harris Lynn, 2011