An email sent to former Microsoft employee Bob Kruger presented in the Connecticut courthouse yesterday appears to show that Microsoft had little interest in promoting interoperability between NT and Unix when it drew up its 1997 WISE Windows interface source environment agreements. Instead it was interested in killing Java, and then Unix according to the email. Microsoft employee Rob Wright wrote to Kruger If our COM model wins then Windows wins. It is not about making Unix a better operating system to build apps on. It is about killing Java and then Unix.
Kruger was testifying as a Microsoft witness at the ongoing antitrust court battle with Bristol Technologies Inc in Bridgeport. Bristol claims that the terms of the WISE agreement were so onerous that it could not do business under it. WISE licensees get access to Microsoft source code that they can use in products which redeploy Windows and NT applications and systems software to run on Unix. Kruger – the original negotiator on the first WISE contracts – wrote back to Wright that he had written a nice piece of mail, well stated. Kruger now works for BMC Software Corp.
There is no court today (Thursday). On Friday, Microsoft is expected to rest its case, and rebuttal witnesses will be heard. Bristol, which claims to have had some trouble finding witnesses prepared to testify against Microsoft, has persuaded one of its customers, John Silvestri from Gamma Technologies Inc, to appear. After that there is expected to be a charge conference on Monday, with closing arguments on Tuesday. That means the case is currently on schedule to go to jury on Wednesday July 14, as expected (CI No 3,695).
