Boies: Mr. Gates, is the term proprietary API a term that is commonly used in your business?
Gates: Let me give you …
Boies: all I’m trying to do is …
Gates: … the common meanings that those words could have and you can pick one of them and ask me a question about it
Boies: no
Gates: Do you want me to define proprietary API or not?
Boies: No, I don’t want you to define proprietary API. I didn’t ask you to define proprietary API. I asked you a simple question about whether the term proprietary API was commonly used in your business. Now I’m prepared to sit here as long as you want to to answer questions that I haven’t asked. But I have a certain number of questions that I am going to ask at the end of these other answers. Now this is a simple question. You can say yes, no, or it is used in lots of different ways. But then I can choose what to follow up on. Or you can simply make whatever statements you want and I’ll go back to my question afterwards. Now, is the term property API a term that is commonly used in your business?
Gates: I don’t know how common it is. It has many different meanings.
There's a reason we normally don't take questions as fully literal in day-to-day life.
Of course bill has not run a survey of the commonality of the use of the term of proprietary api in microsoft communications, so "I do now have that data".
No, we don't use that terminology much but other terms which might or might not have a similar meaning.
Because how often do you use the word proprietary API, and how often do you use internal API, Microsoft API, etc instead.
Boies tries to pull Gates repeatedly during the deposition into this kind of trap.
The general public hates lawyers. But it hates weasels even more. And CEOs acting like weasels even more than that. That's why congressional hearings are sometimes delightful to watch. It feeds our hatred of CEO "others."
There are plenty of CEOs who can talk to lawyers, even in a public forum, and do it well. Splitting hairs never looks good. It makes you look guilty.
Any company offering a product could be said to have executives who are concerned about competing products. It could range from malicious, anti-competitive behavior to simply wanting to provide a good experience.
That's why Gates wanted the lawyer to use less charged, ambiguous language. I personally believe he was engaging in unethical anti-competitive behavior, but you're going to have to nail him on it fair and square, rather than playing word tricks with him.
>The general public hates lawyers. But it hates weasels even more. And CEOs acting like weasels even more than that.
The lawyer was the one employing weasel words, there, by definition [1]. "Paying attention to" or "aware of" would be a much more fair and clear phrase.
>Splitting hairs never looks good. It makes you look guilty.
Yes, and the lawyer was probably aware of that and deliberately exploiting the ability to create such a perception. Either you fall into the trap and later are pointed to as sounding guilty, or you demand rigor and sound guilty in the moment. It's a double bind.
[1] Oxford definition of "weasel words": "words or statements that are intentionally ambiguous or misleading."
That's why I think he should have taken his own interpersonal and forced that through.
Which browser was he concerned about? Internet Explorer. Why? Because it's their product - in the browser space, that one is literally his main concern.
Evoking a "That's not what i meant" response comes across rather differently than the wordplay shown here. And having the attorney narrow the question to sth like "but out of IE's competitors, which one concerns you?" is the open door you're looking for.
("None really concern me in any sense of the word.", etc.)
Similarly, his statement "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" wasn't technically a lie in the context of the case. The investigation lawyers had textualized the definition of 'sexual relations' to be limited to PIV sexual intercorse, which he hadn't engaged in. So in a legal context his statement of not having 'sexaal relations' and his admission to having an 'improper physical relationship', were in no way contradictory.
However, when you take the statements out of that context and put them in the context of public opinion, it appears to be a bold faced lie. The more you play the game, the worse it looks outside of that context.
Lawyer tried constantly to get me to answer a question that would set them up. At the end they gave up and asked "did they tell you this item was for X and they were not allowed to charge for that". "No.". The deposition ended there.
Given it was not a huge deal litigation and the deposition took place in my lawyer's dining room it was actually an interesting experience and not really uncomfortable. It was akin to doing a programming interview. Actually a lot less was on the line.
their lawyer would (hopefully) not have that motivation
That's not 'logical' it's exactly the opposite of 'logical'.
If he answers "Netscape Navigator", then the Boies will continue on with the meaning that Gates was viewing them as a competitive threat.
If he answers "None", then Boies can go down the path of Microsoft not giving a damn about interoperability with 3rd-party software.
Because that's the browser his company makes, so, amongst browsers, that should have been his main concern. No need for wordplay, no looking at competition. Just the concern you'd expect from the CEO: a focus on their own product.
> Boies: What non-Microsoft browsers were you concerned about in January of 1996?
Is that the goal he's shooting for? To concede as many facts as possible to a hostile interrogator as quickly as possible?
The article may come off a little bit too harsh on Gates, but it is essentially right in that the US Gov strategy may have been to score a PR win on Gates and Microsoft. In that way, Gates came across as more on the defence than he perhaps needed to be in the situation. The deposition ended up being a low point from the public's perspective, though any damage has mostly been undone in the 2+ decades since.
Ars is a Conde Naste property intended to get clicks to boost ad revenue potential.
It’s a ‘zine for Internet culture addicts, not a useful legal, engineering, or science forum.
If you are on the other side of this, it is your job to prevent this use of language and make sure that they don't manage to implicate yourself in any way, by nonchalant use of words. Being vigilant about your use of specific words in specific contents, and about querying what exactly they are trying to say by each question seems like a good default approach to the problem of not giving your opponent attorney more ammunition than they should fairly have. I imagine Mr. Gates was used to mistreatment by lawyers and simply speaks their language at that point.