Remember WordPerfect? In the 1980s, it was the leading word processor on the PC platform. The program became part of Novell Corp.'s plan to challenge Microsoft as the leading software supplier for PCs. A vestige of that battle lives on in a $1.2 billion lawsuit that refuses to die.

Forgive me if I indulge in a little history here. There's no way to understand these events without appreciating the way the PC world looked in the days of MS-DOS and 16-bit Windows.

Utah-based Novell was a very successful company in the 1980s. It published NetWare, the network operating system that ran on virtually all networked PCs. The company was also the market-leading seller of network cards. Even in those days, Novell walked an anti-Microsoft line. The boot loader for NetWare was DOS – not MS-DOS, but Novell DOS, a descendant of MS-DOS clone DR DOS, which Novell acquired in 1991 with its purchase of Digital Research.

Following the Digital Research purchase, Novell went on a buying spree, seemingly to compete with Microsoft. It bought WordPerfect to compete with Microsoft Word and Quattro Pro to compete with Excel. Novell bought Unix Systems Laboratory from AT&T, and was for a time the only publisher of Unix.

Events did not play out in Novell's favor. Novell DOS never made a dent in the MS-DOS market. Microsoft Office outsold Novell's competing offerings. Desktop Unix required computer horsepower beyond most consumers' reach, and Windows solidified its position as the ubiquitous OS on the desktop.

Novell wound up selling off virtually all of its products just a couple years after acquiring them. The company remains in business today as a subsidiary of Attachmate. Novell is the vendor behind SuSE Linux and a publisher of various enterprise tools, most of which, I admit, I've never heard of.

Oh, and one more thing. Novell is the plaintiff in a long-running legal battle against Microsoft, a battle that could result in a $1.2 billion return on Attachmate's investment.

Novell's lawsuit against Microsoft centers around the introduction of Windows 95. This was a major release for Microsoft, which was looking to transform the kludgy, DOS-with-a-pretty-face Windows 3.x line with a significant rewrite, 32 bits from the ground up. Novell's WordPerfect was the leading word processor in the days leading up to the Windows 95 launch, and Novell expected to continue to milk the WordPerfect cash cow.

But it didn't turn out that way. Windows 95 turned out not to be a good host for WordPerfect. Novell claims that Microsoft disabled four APIs that were necessary for Windows versions of WordPerfect and Quattro Pro to run in the Windows 95 environment. Microsoft doesn't deny this claim, but says the changes were necessary to make Windows 95 more robust. WordPerfect's market share dropped from 50 percent in 1990 to less than 10 percent in 1996.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who was chairman and CEO of the company during the time period covered by the lawsuit, testified in the trial that Microsoft's actions were not intended to thwart Novell. Microsoft's lawyers argued in court that Novell made a series of poor decisions that meant WordPerfect couldn't keep up with Windows technology.

However, an internal e-mail seems to contradict this testimony. The e-mail, from Gates to senior vice-president Brad Silverberg and other Microsoft employees, covered the shell, which displayed file names in Win95, and API extensions that allowed developers to access it. Gates wrote: “I have decided that we should not publish these extensions. We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for likes of Notes, Wordperfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage.”

The Novell-versus-Microsoft suit has been raging since 2004. It has been dismissed a couple times for technical reasons, but Novell has continued to pursue the matter. The most recent resurrection of the suit resulted in a deadlocked jury on December 16. The Associated Press and other sources have reported that while 11 jurors were inclined to accept Novell's arguments, one juror remained irrevocably unconvinced. The judge asked both Novell and Microsoft if they would accept a verdict that was not unanimous, and Microsoft declined. The judge then dismissed the case.

Novell has promised that it will seek another trial. With more than a billion dollars at stake, and with 11 of 12 jurors apparently agreeing with its arguments, it has little to lose.

Web recommendation: I don't usually track stock-market transactions, but I've followed with bemused interest the hailstorm of news stories about last week's initial public offering of Zynga Inc. It was the biggest U.S. IPO since Amazon went public in 2004, and it put $1 billion in Zynga's bank account. Not bad for a company that's best-known for the annoying Farmville app on the Facebook platform. Pundits are reading a lot into the “fizzle” of Zynga's stock, which opened at $10 per share but ended the day at $9.50. Analysts are using these results to prove their pet theories about the end of easy money in the tech sector. (My own thought: A billion bucks? For Farmville? If that isn't easy money, I don't know what is.) The most sensible analysis of Zynga's IPO comes from Robert Hof at forbes.com: Zynga IPO goes SplatVille. What went wrong? J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He recently learned that the monkey called Curious George in American children's books is known as Zozo in England and Coco in Germany. In other countries he is known as Bingo, Nicke, Piete, and Peter Pedal. Go figure.

Intellectual property law was created to protect the rights of creators over products of the mind. Speaking loosely: Patents protect inventions. Trademark protection covers names, images, and designs used in commerce. Copyright covers literary and artistic works, including both tangible artifacts and intangibles such as performances. Trade-secret protection is for information that owners keep secret to maintain competitive advantage.

The intersection of intellectual property law and software development is a fascinating and potentially lucrative field. The application of traditional intellectual property law to software is not always straightforward. It is generally acknowledged, for instance, that computer source code is subject to copyright protection – it is, after all, a written work, same as a novel or screenplay. (Well, sort of the same.) Of course, the same source-code file might be protected by patent law or trade-secret protection. You are surely aware that software patents have become very big business in recent years. If your job is in jeopardy of being outsourced or offshored, consider leveraging your technical expertise into a new career as a patent agent. You don't even have to go to law school – just pass the patent bar exam (you can find review materials and courses online) and you're in business. According to one site, patent agents earn about 25 percent more than software engineers.

But I digress.

The relationship between software and patent law is straightforward compared to the intersection of software and copyright protection. Specifically, it is unclear whether or not computer programming languages should be eligible for copyright protection. Uncertainties and apprehensions have attended this question for a long time.

A couple decades ago, Borland International – a publisher of C and Pascal compilers, spreadsheets, and database systems – was at the center of the copyrighting-a-language controversy. On the one hand, Borland was sued by Lotus, which claimed that because Borland's Quattro Pro duplicated a portion of Lotus 1-2-3's “command structure” – the keystrokes controlling operation of the spreadsheet – Borland was guilty of violating Lotus's copyrighted language. (Borland prevailed in court, setting a precedent against the copyrightability of programming languages.) At about the same time, Borland acquired dBase publisher Ashton-Tate, which was at the time litigating against Fox Software, whose database system implemented the dBase programming language. In this case, Borland's interests were on the opposite side of the copyrighting-a-language issue. No one knows how the judges might have ruled: Borland agreed to drop the case, and all future cases based on infringement of the dBase programming language, in return for regulatory approval of its acquisition of Ashton-Tate. It is important to note, however, that the U.S. Justice Department's Antitrust Division did not reject the copyrightability of the dBase language in its 1991 Competitive Impact Statement. It merely enjoined Borland from pursuing infringement lawsuits. (Read more here.)

Fast-forward to August 2010, when Oracle sued Google for alleged intellectual-property violations in the Android operating system. Alongside 50 alleged patent violations was this claim: “Oracle America owns copyrights in the code, documentation, specifications, libraries, and other materials that comprise the Java platform.” In particular, Oracle alleges that Google violated its copyright by implementing copyrighted Java APIs and copying a dozen small library source files. The source-file issue isn't interesting – source-code files are obviously copyrightable. But if you can copyright a language's APIs, are you copyrighting the language? It's hard to say. We'll have to wait for the judge's ruling – this case is still pending. (Read more here.)

Outside the U.S., the applicability of copyright law to programming languages is being tested in the United Kingdom, where SAS Institute, a publisher of statistical-analysis software, has brought suit against competitor World Programming Ltd., alleging that World has duplicated the SAS programming language in its software. Again, we are waiting for a judge's ruling (the case is being adjudicated by the UK High Court). There is an interesting twist, however. In July 2010, the British court asked for guidance from the Court of Justice of the European Union. Specifically, the court asked the CJEU if programming languages could be copyrighted. The court has not ruled on the issue, but it has released a statement from the office of Advocate General Yves Bot, whose advisory statements are almost always followed by the court. Bot dismissed the idea the languages could be copyrighted: “The functionalities of a computer program and the programming language cannot be protected by copyright.” Should the court adopt this position, the matter would essential be closed throughout the European Union. (Read more here.)

Should languages be subject to copyright? I keep scratching my head. I can definitely see both sides of this fascinating issue.

Web recommendation: I read an interesting report on language choice and software quality today. The report was produced by an international consulting firm called CAST, which says it has analyzed 365 million lines of code in 745 IT applications. A language-by-language comparison shows the highest density of bad code in Java EE applications, while COBOL applications show the fewest problems. CAST, which advocates metrics in software development and management, makes a summary of the report available on its Web site for free, though you must fill out a registration form to get at the data. I'm not wholly convinced, but the report is food for thought. You can read it here. J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He plays a mean game of gin rummy.

Source code for version 4.0 (actually version 4.0.1) of Android is now available for download from Google. Get the code here.

The latest release of the Android OS, code-named Ice Cream Sandwich, is intended to run on both smart phones and tablet computers. The first announced Android 4.0 device is the Galaxy Nexus smart phone from Samsung. The Ice Cream Sandwich source code available for download from Google assumes a Nexus target. Bloggers and new sites speculate that the Nexus will be released for retail sale on November 17, at least in Europe. Canadian telecom operators Bell and Virgin are expected to ship the Nexus in December, with Rogers and Telus following in January 2012. Rumor-mongers expect Verizon so ship the Nexus first in the U.S., probably by the end of November.

According to Google software engineer Jean-Baptiste Queru, who announced the availability of Android 4.0 source code, developers who download Ice Cream Sandwich code will receive the entire Android source code tree, which includes 3.x (Honeycomb) code. Google had not previously released Honeycomb source code.

For more information, check out the Android Open Source Project home page.

Web recommendation: Professor Orin S. Kerr of the George Washington University Law School attempts to put a stake through the heart of the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in his recent testimony before the House of Representatives subcommittee on crime, terrorism, and homeland security. According to Kerr, the CFAA criminalizes the everyday actions of millions of innocent Americans who use the Internet in routine ways. “Any of them,” Kerr says, “could fast arrest and criminal prosecution.” A PDF file of Kerr's testimony is available here. J.D. say check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He doesn't much care for burek.

Android 4.0 – familiarly known as Ice Cream Sandwich – was introduced on October 18 at the Hong Kong launch event for Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone.

Android is Google's (mostly) open-source operating system for smartphones and tablets. Since version 1.5, major releases of the operating system have been named for sweet foods: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo (frozen yogurt), Gingerbread, and Honeycomb. Ice Cream Sandwich is the semi-official nickname for version 4.x of the OS.

Source code for the operating system has generally been available to developers, but Google broke that tradition with version 3.x, Honeycomb. The company's explanation suggested that in their eagerness to get the OS ported from phones to tablets, Google engineers had indulged in some hacks and shortcuts that might tarnish Android's reputation or encourage developers to rely upon temporary kludges.

Given Google's unwillingness to part with Honeycomb source, developers have naturally wondered if the code for v. 4.0 would be similarly embargoed.

An unofficial answer is found in an email message written by Google engineer Dan Morrill. The email was subsequently cited in a Google+ post by self-described Android geek Jean-Baptiste Queru. At this point, Google has made no official corporate announcement.

It appears, however, that the company will release Android 4.0 source code to developers once the OS is “available on devices” (according to Morrill's email). Since Samsung's Galaxy Nexus will be out next month, Android geeks like Queru speculate that Ice Cream Sandwich source code will follow shortly.

I'll follow up with more news once a release date is confirmed.

Web recommendation: Perhaps you've noticed that the tech world has contributed more than its share to the universe's supply of offbeat characters. Among my favorite techie iconoclasts is the remarkable Richard P. Feynman, whose contributions to physics are exceeded only by his cynical, sometimes sophomoric sense of humor. I enjoyed both his autobiographical books, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) and What Do You Care What Other People Think? (Further Adventures of a Curious Character). Today, I'm happy to point you to YouTube's collection of Feynman videos – specifically the Fun to Imagine monologues on physics. Great stuff! J.D. say check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He recently relocated to a small town outside Belgrade – stop by if your travels take you through Serbia.

Have you read about Mozilla's Open Badges infrastructure project? It's the most worthwhile and inspirational open source initiative I've read about in some time.

The Open Badges project is intended to create a reliable, open mechanism for documenting individuals' education, experience, achievements, and skills.

Mozilla envisions a future in which organizations large and small validate individuals' achievements by issuing badges – essentially, just graphic images, but the images are linked back to the issuing organization so you can see exactly what the person did and who the certifying organization is.

Here's what they say about the project's goals at Mozilla:

If we’re successful, the benefits to learners will be tremendous. Open Badges will let you gather badges from any site on the internet, combining them into a story about what you know and what you’ve achieved. There is a real chance to create learning that works more like the web.

Also, this sort of badge collection may eventually become a central part of online reputation, helping you get a job, find collaborators and build prestige. This is another reason Mozilla wants to build an open badge format: it can show the real potential of open identity tools on the web.

The home page for the project is here: openbadges.org. For a more detailed view of the project's goals and the technologies Mozilla envisions embodying in it, read the white paper: Open Badges for Lifelong Learning.

The MacArthur Foundation is partnering with Mozilla in setting the early direction for the initiative. The charity has its own whitepaper here: Learning can happen anytime, anyplace, at any age. This news release details the substantive ways in which MacArthur is helping to support the Open Badges concept.

Open Badges has the potential to help all of us document the learning we have done outside of academia, the accomplishments we have made outside the workplace. It's an idea whose time has come. But don't take my word for it. Check out the site, sign up for the mailing list, and get involved.

After all, if you wind up contributing, you can earn a badge.

Web recommendation: It's been a good year for Serbia in the world of sports. I already pointed you to the Web site of Serbian tennis star (and perhaps, currently, the world's best player) Novak Đoković. This time, I am pleased to report that Serbia's men's volleyball team has beaten Italy to win EuroVolley 2011. You can read all about it here: Serbia is the 2011 European champion! J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He recently relocated to a small town outside Belgrade – stop by if your travels take you through Serbia.

Have you heard of the Freedom Box? It's the brainchild of professor Eben Moglen of the Columbia University School of Law in New York.

In February 2010, Moglen addressed a regular meeting of the Internet Society in New York. In his talk – video of which is available widely over the net, including here – Moglen discussed the security dangers of the current model of the Internet. Centralized servers maintain information about us plus logs that compile histories of our activities, Moglen points out. These servers are typically under corporate control and the user information on them is routinely used – misused – by their owners.

This is a dangerous computing model, Moglen says. And it's a bad deal for users. Free Web-hosting (as offered by Facebook and other social-networking sites) and e-mail (as offered by Google and other hosts) isn't really free: It's offered in exchange for full-time spying. Users have ceded control of vast amounts of their personal information without intending to, nor understanding the consequences.

Targeted advertising is just the beginning. Moglen cites a research project that found it was possible to identify closeted gay users on Facebook. The task was relatively easy, Moglen explains. And he warns that this kind of data-mining is just the tip of the iceberg.

The solution, Moglen says, is the Freedom Box – a small, inexpensive Web server that you plug into the wall and forget about. The Freedom Box handles your mail and file transfer and commercial transactions and social networking without exposing you to external servers whose sponsors may not have your best interests at heart. Such a server could be the size of a cell-phone charger, Moglen speculates, and sell for $30 or so once the devices are made in production quantities.

The software component of the Freedom Box is free, of course. A project to create and assemble the required software is under way at the FreedomBox Foundation. The software is based on Debian GNU/Linux plus readily accessible free-software components. The foundation's tech lead is Bdale Garbee, former project leader of Debian.

You don't need me to tell you that the current state of Internet security is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Check out the Freedom Box. Get involved by contributing money or code or ideas. It's good stuff.

Web recommendation: Why do software-development superstars have such primitive Web sites? I recommended Charles Petzold's site in a recent blog post despite its lackluster layout and 1990s-style design. Now I find that I need to point you to the personal site of free-software legend Richard Stallman, whose accomplishments as an Internet pioneer and political activist are too numerous to list here. Stallman is a little strident and a little paranoid for my tastes, but he is that rare individual, a certified idealist. And he has literally changed the world. His Web page is a cornucopia of thoughtful writing despite its bare-bones plain-text appearance. You'll find it here: http://stallman.org/. J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He recently relocated to a small town outside Belgrade – stop by if your travels take you through Serbia.

Up there in Portland this week, OSCON is taking place. The open source world at large uses this as a venue to talk about software of all kinds, but from the outside it does appear to be growing in popularity in the enterprise. Or, at least, with enterprise companies.

Today, looking back at the history of open source software and looking forward to the future, the enterprise is only going to continue its growth as the place where open source innovation takes place. Apache Hadoop will see to that. In Hadoop, we have an ecosystem of tools that are essentially of no use to anyone outside of business and science. We've had HPC tools for a long time, and open source HPC tools as well. But Hadoop provides a framework that is useful at exactly the right time: when data is exploding.

Linux, which turned 3.0 last week, was similarly placed in history. In 1999, the world needed servers more than anything else. You couldn't spin up new Web servers fast enough. Cobalt made a whole $1 billion business based on the idea of cranking out cheap servers. It was Linux that enabled those servers to come online faster and easier than anywhere else. The dedicated concentration of expertise and genius upon that single platform helped mold Linux into exactly what the world needed at that time and place.

This is mostly just a round-about way to brainstorm for my larger article, but just to make sure ya'll get something out of OSCON even if you can't be there, here are some links to the best stuff at the conference.

The Unicode support shootout (Super awesome. Not to be missed)

Live stream of OSCON going on right now.

The Open Cloud Initiative.

Oracle previews MySQL 5.6

Mozilla is building an operating system.

Metrics, Metrics Everywhere. (Not OSCON, but still awesome.)

Modo Labs, a provider of open source applications for mobile platforms and devices, announced the release of the Kurogo Mobile Framework version 1.0 for developers.

Kurogo evolved from the MIT Mobile Framework – adopted by universities and used to share important information on a variety of smartphones and tablets – into an open source project that allows enterprises and others to create a native-like experience via the mobile Web. Native applications can also be created, although iOS is the only platform currently supported, according to David Ormsbee, CTO of Modo Labs.

Ormsbee said Kurogo has a “server component for data aggregation and as a way to push the data” to mobile devices including the iPhone, iPad and any phone – including feature phones – with a mobile browser.

“These groups [Universities and Businesses] have islands of data that aren’t integrated but have important information. [Kurogo] lets you [the developer or organization] pull all the data to one interface and we’ve focused on adapting that interface to be appropriate for mobile devices,” Ormsbee said. Although this application is easily adopted by universities, it can also be used as an HR application -- to map office locations, availability and contact information for employees on one centralized application.

Modo Labs' Kurogo download offers a variety of modules for developers to utilize this solution immediately, modules that have been tested on a variety of devices according to Ormsbee. Developers can also access the source code in order to tweak the programs for their own individualized companies. Kurogo is available on GitHub and can be downloaded for free via kurogo.org. If you’re a developer interested in discussing the framework with others, you can also join the Kurogo Google group.

Would you use something like this? Do you think more of these projects will be available as the number of available devices increases?

LinkedIn released a GitHub application today to help developers access the millions of software projects available via GitHub, according to a blog post by LinkedIn. LinkedIn actually has two projects on GitHub – Voldemort and Kafka – and the new application will allow developers to showcase their software portfolios alongside their professional resumes.

The GitHub LinkedIn application functions like the box.net application – showcasing projects under the resume section of LinkedIn and automatically updates when the developer’s account updates on GitHub.

According to LinkedIn, the new application also lets developers follow their colleagues’ projects and determine who is working on a similar project in order to share code more efficiently.

Will you install this application on your LinkedIn? Do you think it will help within the open source software community?

Just a quick note to point everyone toward the blog work of Pelegri, who has posted a thorough tabulation of just what Oracle has done with all of the open source projects it inherited from Sun. Main take-away? Only VirtualBox remains unmolested, and from what I hear, it remains a very useful and popular free tool. Everything else? Not so much...