Remembering How Microsoft's Fake Windows Error Ended In a $280 Million Secret Settlement
10 73Slashdot reader joshuark summarizes this walk down memory lane from the tech site MakeUseOf: Facing real competition from Digital Research's DR DOS, Microsoft secretly embedded a sabotaging mechanism known as "AARD code" into beta versions of Windows 3.1 to prevent it from running on Digital Research's competing DR DOS operating system.
This code triggered fake, alarming error messages to convince developers that DR DOS was unstable... Although Microsoft disabled the feature in the final retail release, the California-based firm Caldera, Inc., which had acquired DR DOS assets, sued Microsoft for anti-competitive practices.
Microsoft settled the lawsuit out of court in 2000 for $280 million, a figure that remained sealed until it was unsealed in 2009.
10 comments
Oh, right! (Score: 5, Insightful)
by T34L ( 10503334 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @06:38AM (#66216490)
The current miasma of enshittification and anticonsumerism among all the major software companies makes me occasionally forget that Microsoft has been ahead of the curve by decades and incredibly evil and garbage pretty much from the beginning.
Re:Oh, right! (Score: 5, Insightful)
by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @08:17AM (#66216560)
Still, they're the Monsanto of software: if something would be worth doing and lucrative, but is not evil, they're not doing.
This scorpion doesn't seem able to change its stripes.
Re:Oh, right! (Score: 5, Interesting)
by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @09:24AM (#66216654)
The irony here is that the true evil has been missed from the story. Microsoft was deliberately trying to fund Caldera to damage Linux. This settlement was an effective way to transfer money from one company to another, avoiding taxes, avoiding scrutiny and settling an outstanding potential future Microsoft liability.
Re:Oh, right! (Score: 5, Informative)
by HighOrbit ( 631451 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @04:18PM (#66217302)
The 2000 settlement with Microsoft was right in time for Caldera to take the $280 million, buy SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) assets, rename itself "The SCO Group", which it then leveraged in the infamous 2003 SCO vs IBM lawsuit claiming Linux infringed the SCO-licensed (but Novell owned since 1993) AT&T copyrights. Caldera's (aka The SCO Group's) lawsuit collasped when it was revealed that SCO did not own the AT&T Unix copyrights, but that AT&T had sold them to Novell and Novell had merely licensed them to SCO.
Re:Oh, right! (Score: 5, Informative)
by dryeo ( 100693 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @12:37PM (#66216864)
While your point is valid, there were differences in some things such as how IBM handled their anti-trust case compared to MS. IBM had a consent agreement with the DOJ and mostly followed it with one result the rise of MS, which at least partially due to IBM's consent agreement got a very good deal on DOS, along with a more open philosophy from IBM. Compare to MS who immediately tried to work around their anti-trust agreement and got political resulting in Bush basically cancelling their anti-trust case.
A good example was the competing operating systems on the PC in the mid 90's.
You had OS/2 (v2+) which during install, if another OS was on the system, installed a Boot manager, called BootManager, which upon boot allowed you to multi-boot, DOS, Windows, OS/2, Linux etc. Meanwhile with MS, it monopolized your HD. Install Win9x on your multi-booting HD and at the end of the install, it would inform you that it had wiped your OS/2 install. No warning, no mention of how a minute or 2 with fdisk could return your multi-boot environment. Imagine, you test a new OS and after installing it, you are informed all your stuff is permanently gone, even though it actually was still there.
Another thing with installing Win9x was that if you had OS/2 installed, it didn't worry about if you had a serial number to enter during install. This continued their attitude that a pirated version of Windows was better then a paid for competitors OS.
OS/2 also mostly followed standards rather then creating their own like MS.
Re:2009 (Score: 5, Informative)
by haruchai ( 17472 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @09:41AM (#66216686)
the SCO/IBM/Novell case & the tracking done by Pamela Jones of Groklaw was big news on Slashdot for a very long time
Re:$280 mil for something they didn't do? (Score: 5, Insightful)
by douglasfir77 ( 6439950 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @08:49AM (#66216600)
In U.S. law, you can be charged with criminal conspiracy even if the planned crime never actually happens. Conspiracy is considered an “inchoate” offense, meaning it is a crime before the target crime is completed.
But in this case they did commit the crime.
Re:$280 mil for something they didn't do? (Score: 5, Insightful)
by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @09:03AM (#66216624)
They did it in the pre-release software knowing that the issues would get picked up by the tech press. Remember this was Windows 3.1 era. Most Windows/Dos users were not internet users.
People relied on what they read in things like PC Mag and Byte, yes even corporate IT decision makers. Microsoft knew that those sorts of publications would leap on the opportunity to test pre-release Windows, would actually try it out on a variety of PC hardware and DOS versions. These were monthly publications at most and would be unlikely to give space to a second review until after the RTM version hit store shelves.
The message would be clear, for a smooth experience on the new Windows, you better plan an upgrade to MSDOS 5. I know a lot of people jumped from MSDOS 3.x to 5.0 at the same time they bought Windows 3.1[1]. So it worked..
By the time everyone figured out Windows 3.1[1] was just fine on DR DOS, they'd already switched MSDOS or already paid to upgrade to MSDOS 5, so Digital Research was not getting the users back.
You're seeing this with beef prices (Score: 5, Interesting)
by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @08:30AM (#66216568)
I know that sounds like a non sequitured but stick with me.
In the old days antitrust lawsuits were part of the enforcement mechanism. If you illegally used a monopoly to harm competition you could expect your competitors to sue you and win.
After the lawsuit you would have to adjust or change your behavior or the regulator would move in.
Microsoft was when that broke down. They did the payouts but the regulator never moved in. Well it did, but then Bush Jr won the election and that was that.
So what does that have to do with beef prices? McDonald's has colluded with the beef producers. The beef producer is now giving McDonald's a kickback to keep their profits up while keeping the price of beef elevated via collusion. The regulator is asleep at the wheel or more likely they got shived by the administration. Meanwhile you're paying $8 a pound for ground beef.
You can't keep allowing all the systems that protect you and keep prices low to collapse and then complain when prices shoot up and crooks you all your property. You need to start making a choice between candidates that will actually put money in your pocket and keep it there and candidates that give you that warm feeling inside from grievances.
Unfortunately so far Americans are on track to go for grievance politics
burn in Hell Darl McBride (Score: 5, Informative)
by Thud457 ( 234763 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @08:38AM (#66216586)
Wow, Caldera, there's a company I haven't heard about in a looooonnngg time.
Let's remember that they transformed into blatant patent troll and persistent lawsuit pest The SCO Group [wikipedia.org] which Microsoft funded in a futile attempt to bludgeon Linux out of existence.