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Microsoft Patenting Office XML Formats
mmurphy000 writes "News(.com)+ reports that Microsoft has filed for patents in multiple jurisdictions to control the way other applications use Office's new XML-based file formats. Musings from pundits suggest that OpenOffice.org and other applications might be blocked from interoperating with Office. This, of course on the heels of today's article on Bruce Perens' concerns over patents."
How to make a non-proprietary format (XML) proprietary. Gee, wouldn't it just be simpler to cut XML out of Office entirely than to throw legions of lawyers and patents at it?
I can see the headlines now - "RIAA and Microsoft make double bust - RIAA found illegal MP3s and Microsoft found someone using XML output from Office".
Microsoft - "How far do you want your head up your backside today?"
Which assumes that OOorg is a marginal product. This may be true in some places, for some time, but after a while the failure to interoperate will become a strong argument to switch away from MSOffice.
Typical scene that is not unheard of today:
"I've sent you a Word document"
"Why not install OOorg and use that instead?"
"What's that?"
"It's like Office but free and doesn't crash."
1 hour later...
"Hey, here's your document, and thanks for the tip!"
Point is that it's much easier to switch someone from paying to free software, and almost impossible to do the reverse. I (as a long-time OOorg user) will spend considerably more effort convincing someone to use the application than any MSOffice user will spend to get me to change back.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Got another example of an open technology Microsoft has made proprietry?
"Microsoft has always played an interesting game when it comes to standards," he said. "They're going to support them as necessary to get technology broadly adopted. But at the same time, they're an (intellectual property) company. That's the case with any big business."
I would have agreed, if after broadly adopted he would have said "they stop playing according to the standard and thereby break compatibility with other software". If you're an analyst on Microsoft, you should know what embrace and extend is, and I think he should have mentioned it here. That is, unless he's partial to Microsoft, which the company claims it isn't.
I use C# and the CLI , theyre ECMA specified.
I wont use MS's fantasy web shit either, use SOAP, its standard.
But I will use C# and the CLI.
WinFS is the long-promised "replace the user-data parts of the filesystem with an RDBMS" feature, and a key part of Longhorn. It basically lets you register an XML schema for describing your data, and the data is then stored not as XML but broken down into a relational database (see also GnomeFS).
The PDC bloggers and MS internal staff are writing extensively about WinFS - especially Mike Deem.
One of the concerns people have with WinFS is "but then any other program could fiddle around with the individual records of what I store, how do I hide stuff or stop them making my 'files' inconsistent by screwing up or deleting individual records" - and if MS want to patent some aspect of their getting Office ready for this, does it mean we're all supposed to patent our XML before we stick into WinFS ??
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
The article wasn't too detailed on what the patent covered but if they do patent it doesn't that mean that they have to release the full spec for their format? And if that happens then other Word alternatives could be created giving people more alternatives.
Also would it be possible for me to "make" a file reader/convert for my own private use?
not that anyone for a moment should have suspected these douchebags would.
they're just speeding up the inevitable, making even more clear why software patents suck ass, and why it's urgent for everyone to reject proprietary technologies NOW. RIGHT NOW. the sooner you do it, the sooner the pain will be over, and the sooner you can start reaping the rewards.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
It's my fucking data, and I'll do what the fuck I like with it thank you very much.
This isn't to stop home users from accessing these formats. It's to stop open source developers from writing software that interoperates with these formats. If OOo implements these in a way that violates the patents, microsoft can have the distribution of OOo stopped in the US. Which is ultimately what they really want.
These are the machinations of a dying dinosaur. Protectionism NEVER works. Not in politics, not in economy, and definitely not in business. What MS is doing is stalling, and they know it. Eventually, they will crash and burn. It's not a matter of if, but of when, and they're trying to delay that when as long as possible.
Ages ago (back when this was a Windows box) I downloaded a little thing for GIMP that let me make GIFs. This was legal because I live in Europe with no software patents as of yet (fingers crossed/touch wood). .doc is: 'you may only use this module if software patents do not apply in your country.' Of course there'd be no way to stop Americans downloading it, which would be just terrible!
OOo could offer something similar if the patented XML format became as popular as the
> I knew this was coming.
I also predicted it, I think the day Slashdot first announced that MS was going to use XML for Word. This is utterly unsurprising.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This file format will only become widespread (and hence a threat to open software adoption) if Office 2003 adoption becomes widespread - which I don't see happening right now.
Companies and individuals are starting to take free software seriously. It doesn't have to be Linux - why not give someone a Windows PC (no licensing apart from what it sold with) and OO.o? If OO.o can gain serious market share before Office 2003 does, the whole thing becomes a non-issue.
Use proper W3C XML or OOo filetypes...
Didn't OOo do this kind of thing first with their XML filetypes? MS filed this in June 2002 in NZ, so surely OpenOffice.org has precent for a "Word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML" maybe sans the "single file" part, which would have to be an obvious follow on?
BTW, more info is on the NZ Open Source Software portal.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
FWIW, Office 2000 is "good enough" for just about everyone. I have no need or desire to upgrade, ever. If people send me documents that it will not open, I'll ask them to resend in a down-version copy. I'm just biding my time until OpenOffice is "good enough" to replace Word. Right now OO still runs into major formatting problems. I'm working on a several hundred page developers / operations manual for example that OO just doesn't handle well, and word handles with ease. In fact, I started writting it in OO before needing to convert. OO is oh-so-close.
However, I'm a New Zealander, and I'd love to actually try and shoot down this at the NZ patent office based on the wonderful prior art that is OpenOffice.org. However, I saw these two "claims" in the patent:
The rest of the patented method applies to OOo, as OOo provides schemas and writes out a well-formed XML document etc. etc. etc. However, I'm not sure if OOo provides "hints" in the files (anyone care to comment what MS is on about there?).
The kicker is claim [0009]. If you save a
IANAL, but this appears to mean that this patent is "sufficiently original" (haha) that it can probably slip past the rubber-stamp-brigade at the patent office as OOo won't be citeable as prior art. Apparently the NZ patent office is sufficiently stupid that they recognise the "one-click" patent, so I don't hold high hopes for this one.
So, has anyone heard of a word processor that has an XML file format that contains all its binary data? If so, post links under this thread
P.S. And NewtonsLaw, if you're reading this, I hope to see a plan of action on Aardvark tomorrow
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Some may recall, for example, this past article on this topic here, or the specific license terms offered here, the key points of which are specifically GPL incompatible.
When national governments choose to build and distribute information, such as the Danish national government has, on patent license encumbered document formats, whether or not royalty bearing, possessing field of use scope, disclaiming of certain legal rights such as to bring suit, or other specific restrictions, or even composed of terms permitting unlimited modifications to the license by the license holder, as this one also does, such governments are creating restricted markets in the public's own goods. This is of course fundimentally improper and certainly is also illegal restraint of trade in the European Union.
There are many implications in having patent encumbered XML schemas, all of them negative for the schema so encumbered. I had long ago considered this specific possibility and considered what actions I would find nessisary to take when that day arrived. One option I think might be useful is for those in Europe to file a brief with Mario's office (European Competition Minister), and note how this issue relates to their current anti-trust case.
Patents do nothing but slow down an industry and promote laziness....
1) Ford, which is considered the model on how to build cars and do processes HAD to get around patents so that he could build a car that EVERYONE can afford.
2) Windsurfer which invented the windsurfing board had a patent, which they only enforced two years before the end of the patent. Until five years before the end of the patent there was no Wind surfing industry. Windsurfer then cashed in and forced bankruptcy of major windsurfers. Where is Windsurfer today? Sitting on money doing nothing.
3) Laser had a patent which caused nobody to do anything with lasers. Once the patent expired we ended up with laser pointers, last light shows, etc, etc..
4) Patents CANNOT be bought and defended by "small" people. Patents cost about 40,000 EUROS a pop and this is not money for the "small" company. This is money for the large company.
Now about your reference to MS and Internet Explorer. Say what you will, but Netscape was no better than Microsoft. I was around in the Netscape days and they were bastards. Once I represented a company who wanted to purchase five thousand licenses to Netscape. Netscape ignored the company because it was too small and companies like Deutsche Telekom were more important.
Microsoft might clone ideas, just like all of the other companies do as well in the industry. The software industry is like writing, we all clone!
The problem in software are the contracts. For example why do I have to buy Windows 5 times for a single computer?
Sir, I would have wished that you would have used your lawyer abilities to reign in the contracts instead of going for the easy cash in Patents. Remember you are going to be responsible for a mess that *I* have to live in.
"A patented, closed, proprietary file format can't hurt anyone if no one is using it."
Especially now that AbiWord can read OpenOffice documents, and as anyone who dual-boots (or runs a mixed-OS network knows), OpenOffice is the easiest way to edit the same documents on different OS's.
Microsoft Office is falling behind. It's pretty pathethic to see it at work, not able to open any SXW documents. What, you need to install a second word-processor just to hold its hand and convert documents?
Plus, as anyone working on important documents knows, what happens when your hard-disk, printer, or motherboard fails. "Sorry, you are not authorised to install MS-Office on a second computer" it will tell you, as you try to print your dissertation late at night on a borrowed computer... having a CD you can install anywhere without worry certainly has its advantages.
Yes, boycott, that's all
OK, I only run a small business, but I do exactly that. I refuse to accept or send out Word documents. I haven't lost any business yet. I send out PDFs (or RTFs if requested), and demand the same in return. And if push comes to shove, everyone can read a plain text document.
If only more people had the balls to stand up to the so-called "office standards"...
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
I can imagine Microsoft being a victim of it's own success here.
.htz?) that would be great.
If by using DRM/Palladium etc. to prevent both:
- Using ripped off copies of Word
- Interoperability with Word
Suddenly a word document will be vastly less useful in the wild than it is now.
Right now I, my mother, her dog and it's accountant can all read Word docs one way or another but none of us have shelled out for Office, and we probably never will.
I actually love using basic HTML for docs, the only problem is that "a document" is actually a bunch of resources. If there was some encapsulated for (a simple zip even?
(This is where someone calls me a Bozo and tells me it already exists...)
>Have a boilerplate response ready explaining that you only accept documents in open formats
That isn't going to work nearly as well as:
"Our office is standardized on Office 97, and with 200 seats, the cost to 'upgrade' to Office 2003 is beyond our capacity. Please resend the file in a backwards compatible manner."
That will get their computing department to ensure people save their files in a compatible format, as most businesses *are* going to stick to Office 2000 or Office 97. They've probably had that message sent to them dozens of times before you give it to them, so they're going to listen to it.
A one-off "it's not open source" message wouldn't get my suppliers, for example, to stop sending me their pricesheets in Excel files.
This is the same as using corel draw for your graphics. It might not be the graphics industry standard, but all the companies I've dealt with (From the National and Regional Phone Books to Local Newspapers, all the way down to the local Ad-Rag) will explain, in detail, how you can save corel draw files in a manner they will accept. They specifically mention corel draw because it *is* popular enough that not supporting it means lost business (despite popular belief by stupid hoity-toity graphics folks at the local learning centers). However, I'd not expect a document on how to save a compatible Xfig file...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Yeah! Right on!
Microsoft, a convicted monopolist who are operating under various restrictions including allowing interoperability between competing products and their own, make a specific move designed to block interoperability between competing products and their own, therfore setting themselves up for a direct breach of the DOJ setlement and we should all be cheering? Yeah, that must be it.
Hey, I have no problem with Microsoft patenting anything they invent. More power to them. What we're worried about is that they will not licence those patents in a fair manner (I don't even mean "For free" You don't always get a free lunch as much as many Slashdoters would like to think). If Microsoft refuse to licence these patents, or use them as a bargaining peice to extract licences on other technology then that is bad.
Like it or not people do need to exchange information, they do use defacto standard Office formats to do it, and we do need to have software other than Microsoft Office which can read and write those formats. Just saying "Hey, don't use Office format documents!" is myopic and stupid.
Those where the days. I could call up the vendor and get info as well. I even got the source code for VMS from Digital. Odd thing it was on microfiche.
Sorry, but that is hardly insightful.
If the consumer really weren't benefitting, then they'd seek out alternatives: they do exist, as I'm sure you know. I've been using one for 9-1/2 years: Linux and associated alternative applications.
Despite the fact that I dislike Microsoft's tactics, it's hard to dispute that their dominance of the market has encouraged adoption of computing by the masses by making computers more useful through easy interoperation: people want to know that what they buy can operate well with others' equipment, so any barrier to this is a barrier to adoption of computing in general. Most of the geeks here (myself included) couldn't care less about how easy or hard it is to get Office data into a Linux spreadsheet, but we are a tiny, tiny minority of all people using computers.
Of course, standards would get us to Nirvana just as market dominance by MS is and allow the tiny minority of us who use something other than Windows to make full use of our computing power under our chosen environments; but there's hardly an economic or public benefit argument to be made for having the guv'mint do our dirty work and go after MS just because they don't make the lives of (generously) 5% of computer users easier.
The only convincing argument IMO for getting the government involved is to ensure that We the Taxpayers aren't getting screwed out of our money by MS: from this perspective, the government doesn't need to pursue litigation, but only needs to state that they will purchase only software that stores and transmits data in royalty-free formats so alternative vendors can be used effectively in price negotiations. At this point, MS would be required to patent-unencumber their file formats in order to get their software into federal offices, and thus into the offices of federal contractors, and from there into subcontractors, etc. I don't see this option being pursued. Why? It seems like it would get MS to play ball a lot more quickly than decades-long litigation.
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what MS is good at is "damage and dillition" of an open standard....SMB
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I didn't think SMB was an open standard. I thought it was a MS proprietary protocol that others reverse engineered. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Hopefully, this will be considered a blatant anti-trust violation if they attempt to use this patent. A judge should bar them from preventing interoperability with products, and not suing for patent violation from such use.
Even XML microsoft used WAS standard based. Everything they take from the standard and open architecture. The only problem is that they make a little (but significant) twist
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How is this insightful? Microsoft has in no way changed XML, you're just flat out wrong there. I think what geeks tend to forget is that just because XML is "human readable" doesn't necessarily mean that anything written in XML is "open". For instance, it's trivial to write closed-format, binary data in a human-readable XML file like so:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8">
<word-document>
<contents>
<![CDATA[
AdEFj13MZ((0_AAMBfjdEmlD;
]]>
</contents>
</word-document>
And there you have it, completely valid XML. Microsoft has not and will never "change" XML and create XML that can't be parsed by other parsers just so they can hide their formats from other people. They don't have to -- those sort of capabilities are built into XML!
Huh?
In terms of development speed:
Compare it to Java and it is pretty much the same.
Compare it to Python and its way behind.
The only reason the people I know use it is for all the RAD development wizards, not because C# is a good language. This too, I presume, because they have not tried using the Qt designer and pyqt.
I don't know that SMB was ever a truly open standard, but was developed in common between IBM, Intel, Digital, and SCO (the real one). So it was at least openly documented and somewhat designed to allow systems from all these vendors to interoperate.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
You will need to pay the MSDN License. .. which could just as well be called MSD License, given the amount of information and stuff that's only available for MSDN subscribers..
Software should be free as in speech, but if we also get some free beer, all the better.
If your documents are that big you need a better editor than Word. FrameMaker is popular for a reason.
Personally I find kWord good enough for me now that I don't have to deal with big documents. I only use OpenOffice (which is too slow to try for daily use on my old system) when I get something in word format. Hopefully the next kWord update will fix that, but I'm not sure.
As I underestand it, if MS patents their file formats, that will prevent anyone without a license from generating files in MS Office formats, but it will not prevent people from displaying them or converting the information into other formats. That's because such patents are for methods of "storing" information. I know this seems pedantic, but law is pedantic, and I'm thinking of the precedent of LZW compression. Without a license, you couldn't generate GIF images but you could display them and convert them. So, although I'm distrustful of Microsoft (and don't use their products), and opposed to software patents, perhaps these patents aren't as dangerous as they seem. Any lawyers know for sure?
> How long will it be before parts of the
It is shocking when you consider
When Sun won in their Java suit against Microsoft, no one expected Microsoft would simply take their offending product, make it even MORE pure-Java un-compliant rename it "Dot Net" and come back charging with it.
The answer is simple:
Dot Net - Just say NO.
Bah, no real worries here, Microsoft is already dead and they just don't know it. The only real problem is all the damage they'll try and cause on the way down.
We have to mobilize our OWN lobbyists and stop Microsoft from strangling the U.S.'s I.T. industry!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
People who develop using Microsoft technology (.Net) are just insane. How long will it be before parts of the .Net Web Services XML formats are proprietary as well?
.Net can actually have it both ways. They can use the stuff from the open source community while still not contributing much (leeching). If the parts are proprietary, they will use an M$FT supplied .Net class to handle the data.
The people who develop using
It has always been a case that people who are "friendly" towards unfair governments or organizations benefit more (at least in the short term, monetary sense). Just like the people who bought SCO stock at a couple of bucks when the lawsuit was announced.
They are not definitely insane.
S
..., just stay out of Microsoft's twisted proprietary world.
Might not help. With copyright, you can (sometimes) successfully argue that you didn't copy a piece of text because you've never seen it. This gets harder to argue as the length of the matching text increases, but it is at least a possible legal defense.
With patents, this doesn't work. Even if you've never heard of the patent, and can prove that you thought it up yourself, you are still guilty. Any use of the ideas in a patent are illegal unless you have a license.
So if you write a piece of code that accidentally uses the same XML encoding that Microsoft has patented, you have violated the patent.
One of the problems with patenting a file format is that programmers "invent" file formats nearly every time they write code that outputs anything at all. Any time you code a print() or write() call, you are in danger of infringing on some patent that you've never heard of.
This is why Bruce Parens is warning that we may soon find that programming may be illegal for anyone but big corporations with the funds for a legal defense against a patent-infringement lawsuit. It's slowly becoming impossible to write code that doesn't violate a software patent.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
You are right, there title is wrong. It was aimed to stirr up peoples anger and they all jumped like programmed puppets. You are the first persom I have seen that figured this out and didn't just fly off the handle like you were supposed to. Anyway, MS is tired of getting the shit end of the patent stick so they are playing the game. The software patent process needs to change.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
...by none other than IBM.
United States Patent #6,658,642 was awarded to Megiddo, et al. on December 2, 2003. The Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation of (Armonk, NY).
System, method and program product for software development provides that "Software developers intending to participate may provide an intention to submit."
This patent goes a long way to explain IBM's, Novell's and Microsoft's interest in OSS. philtr
Here are a few thoughts about Microsoft's WPML.
- It's based on W3 standards
- It stores data in XML format
- It has a companion XML Schema Document
Now, if I understand WPML correctly, it could be possible to transform core WPML elements to OO [Open Office] or other formats using XSLT. Of course, OO uses multiple files and MS embeds them in a single document. But It's quite possible that you could use extensions to XSLT to aggregate multiple files for converting to WPML, output multiple files when converting to OO, xform encoded data to stand alone files, etc.
If this is the case, the ability to xform documents between OO and WPML could be completely embedded in one or more XSL style-sheets, which is completely standards based.
This means that applications that support exchange using standards like XSLT might be able to convert WPML documents on the fly if the user provided it the correct XSLT templates to go along with it. In other words, the program would have no application specific logic for converting Word XML documents. It's all generic.
The tricky part becomes making styles-sheets available to standards compliant applications, which goes back to my first post.
Are XSL style-sheets applications? Could a client that needs you to build an app which saves XML Word documents point your application to these style-sheets at run time? If they need to read Word docs, then it's quite likely they have licensed some MS technology when they purchased Office.
Hum.....
At least 547 have.