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But anyway... "covenant not to sue"?! What kind of joke is that? As far as I know that doesn't mitigate any of the concerns of the OS community. Yes, we have patents. Yes, if you wanted to legally use this code according to the GPL, you would be violating your own license, but we won't sue you so you shouldn't have a problem?! Come on.
"This is a new approach that continues our open and royalty-free approach."
Why do you insist on making people laugh? Anyone who understands how you license technology know that it has NEVER been OPEN.
"We think it will be broadly appealing to developers, including most open source developers. (by the way you did not have to sign anything even before this announcement.)"
Does that mean it's the same situation that was UNACCEPTABLE. It's not about paying or signing anything. It's about patents which cannot interact with OS licenses.
"The only agenda we have is providing Office customers with the reassurance that they will be able to access their documents for generations to come."
Come on! You just said: "The only agenda is widespread support for the Office Open XML formats." Is the agenda this (widespread use) or that (eternal access)?
Can't you be honest: you were afraid ODF would become a significant movement. Prior to, during, and after the Mass. debates, you have claimed that the format already meets these agendas.
Please don't redefine what an "open" standard is. If/When ECMA certifies it as standard, it'll be "open" as per the requirements of ECMA.
"It’s not about paying or signing anything. It’s about patents which cannot interact with OS licenses."
I assume you meant OSS, but this statement is wrong anyways. Unless the overly restrictive GPL is the only OSS license out there.
Let this be the start of many announcements to come I hope.
Why no mention of OpenDocument? Instead of embracing an already defined and open standard Microsoft just have to go and create their own, does that sound like Microsoft have really changed?
Plus what about XDI? Isn't that pretty much the same thing as SSE? Again Microsoft feel the need to veer away from an existing standard (although XDI is still in development) and try to force their own standards down everyone else's throats.
Is it good that Microsoft is making their standards more open? For sure and I am loving seeing it but they still don't get "it", they want the world to play by their rules and continue to refuse to truly embrace open standards and participate in any kind of commuunity corroboration.
That of course is there right as a company but I wish they wouldn't make these vain attempts and pretend they have come full circle, when really all they are doing is a token effort and marketing the heck out of it.
So Scoble, is RMS going to approve of this or is there some hidden agenda? Is it truly going to open so that a GPL project like Open Office can use it? I remain skeptical but hopeful.
The press release is here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/200...
As a Massachusetts taxpayer and voter I need more than reassurances by a Microsoft director that you guys have changed your ways.
If you are compatible with the GPL, then you are truly open. I don't expect commercial companies to write software and make the code GPL but if you are going to claim openness for a document standard then GPL compatibility is the requirement.
Hoping for the best.
I'm thrilled to see this and now I'm going to read the press release.
A few weeks later Microsoft announced it is adding PDF to Word, and how it is going to submit its XML to a standards body. In both cases it said it was due to customers' demand, and said nothing about Massachusetts, but can anyone in the world believe that claim?
What do you think, Robert? Was Massachusetts at least part of the motive?
As for what this really means, I second James Bailey that we need to wait for what Groklaw, EFF and GNU have to say once they have analyzed the license.
The fact that Paoli is being so disingenuous makes me think that this is still some sort of a trick.
Should those developers be drawing conclusions from the fact the covenant's language is not available for inspection? Microsoft is in effect asking everyone to abandon all the work that has been done on and with the OpenDocument XML standard and wait for Office Open XML. That would be a far more credible request if the covenant not to sue were published immediately.
That has been a standard Microsoft tactic for decades. Someone comes out with something attractive, and Microsoft freezes the market by announcing, "Next year are going to come out with the same thing but twice as good." Sometimes it delivers, and sometimes it doesn't but it usually destroys the market for the original producer.
MS 'partnering' with ECMA just means that MS is up to their usual FUD/EEE tricks.
Who cares about "schemas"?
It's all about the code baby!
Microsoft is recognizing that advancing to new incompatible file formats is going to cause $$great harm$$ to the corporate world.
Microsoft also recognizes the OpenOffice.org is poised to become the default in the Office world, being a good enough file format with a good enough Office suite, and obviously Microsoft wants to undo that.
Their original pseudo open move was lame to say the least. They caused stir but never acknowledged it. In fact, what they should do now is find a new name for the file format because "Microsoft Open Office Xml" just does not cut it...especially when it's a zip file (made of a bunch parts, some of which include yet-to-be documented Xml markup).
When the hell did OpenDoc is a "standard"? Just because of a bunch of non-Microsoft folks/companies come up with a document format doesn't make it a standard. Calling OpenDoc a standard is pure bullshit. Microsoft .doc format is the facto standard for document right now; just like PDF, just by the merit of their popular usage.
On Dody's point - OpenDoc *is* currently a standard document format, it's got an open specification and is used by OpenOffice and several other tools. It's obviously not in as widespread use as Word's current closed format, but it's more of a standard simply because more than one company's tools use it.
Yes, actually, there are. Have you missed how much market share Office has around the world? The Starbucks guy alone I was sitting next to had hundreds of Office files.
OpenDoc: Wide-open format, not entangled by patent issues, not strapped to any one software suite, created and used by a group of companies with proven open software support.
OpenXML: Open (with a few catches), entangled with various patent issues that will likely stymie interoperability, born from a dominating software suite, created and used by a company that would like nothing more than to wipe open software off the face of the planet.
Office Team, you've got some serious questions that need to be answered. I don't want to request government documents in 2012 only to be told that I must be running Windows Vista SP3, Office 13 and Internet Explorer 8 to view them. So, until you prove otherwise, OpenDoc is the future in my eyes.
You know, Microsoft, you're a frustrating beast. So much good always fucked up by so much nonsense.
Yes. It's a text file inside a ZIP file. Yes. Yes.
>Will these documents be portable across platforms, without a degradation in quality or interoperability?
Yes. Watch the video. It explains all.
I'd love to watch the video, but I can't. Most WMV files don't work correctly on my Mac. Hmmm. Funny how that is. Well, at least the site its hosted on renders, what with me not using IE6. Oh, wait, IE6 isn't even offered on this platform. Well, I guess that just puts me in the ghetto. Hopefully, I'll be able to type up my complaints in Word 12 for the world to see.
Funny how they work on the Mac sitting here. You just need to use the download file and the latest Microsoft Media Player.
2) What is open enough?
3) What is good enough to be called a 'standard'?
4) What is good enough to be developed as a specification?
5) In a world of just-in-time delivery of bundled functionality for a specific task (think mashup), is reduced complexity per namespaced application better than tightly bundled functionality (web application vs desktop)?
Using ECMA is an old dodge and ISO was so thorougly butchered in the opening days of web 1.0, it takes some chutzpah to go that route in standardization, but that is a separate issue. It does have an effect on item a. below but we don't know if that is positive or negative. There is a bit of 'as the twig is bent, so grows the tree' karma here.
On the other hand, some believe this is about OpenDoc vs OpenOffice. This is about:
a. Procurement policies that can create a tipping point.
b. The fact that PDF was considered 'open enough' and therefore, Adobe is the ultimate winner of this current tempest in a teapot.
The entertainment value here is profound.
Danny: are there *really* billions of these
Scoble: Yes, actually, there are. Have you missed how much market share Office has around the world? The Starbucks guy alone I was sitting next to had hundreds of Office files.
The way the original answer was worded sugested that billions of documents were already written in Office 12, when they obviously aren't. Sorry for being harsh, but it's not Danny's fault if he couldn't parse the weaselspeak.
"The obvious first take on this submission will be all about Massachussets and whether or not we were "made" to do this by them. The real story is no we were not. The concerns raised in MA are important as is our relationship with them, but it is important to remember that 2 years ago this month we made the Office 2003 XML Reference Schema available under extremely favorable terms for implementers. The discussions around the State of MA unquetionably put a fine point on the discussions about the future of how document formats were handled, but they were not the direct catalyst of this action on our part. "
Yeah. Got that. That's a time line. It presents no argument or logic. In 2003, the XML Schema was made available. So what? The schema does not mean that any application on any platform can read and create Office compatible documents without a license or use of your patents.
Which is why Mass. rejected the formats.
NOW, and ONLY NOW, do you take this step.
So can you please explain how that post explains ANYTHING?
You mean the one from 2 years ago? (I know there have been bug fixes, but really... ) "latest" is quite superfluous in that statement.
OASIS submitted ODF 1.0 to ISO/IEC-JTC1 on September 30, 2005.
There's more on this issue at http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com.
--r
Yes. It’s a text file inside a ZIP file. Yes. Yes.
Will these documents be portable across platforms, without a degradation in quality or interoperability?
Yes. Watch the video. It explains all.
Robert...what happens when someone in Office 12 on Windows uses IRM to set a document as view only for a week, with no print or modification rights, and sends that to someone running Linux or *BSD, or Solaris?
Will they be able to use that document in the way the IRM rights allow, or will they be told to view the document on an "approved" platform in an "approved application"?
See, even if you set rights on a PDF file, as long as I can view it, I can read it in Acrobat Reader, Preview (on mac os x), in a browser with the PDF plugin from Schubert|IT, or with many, many other applications that aren't provided by Adobe.
Based on past IRM history, if you apply IRM, that document becomes, in a *best case* scenario, usable ONLY within Office on Mac OS X/Windows, or IE on Windows.
IRM issues are ALSO a part of this, and MS has no credibility here.