Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Opening Office XML Formats
sriram_2001 writes "Microsoft has opened up the XML schemas for Office 2003, thereby silencing a lot of criticism. This could potentially open the way for several government contracts as certain governments have made open standards (and not open-source) a pre-requisite.
In their FAQ, Microsoft not only says that open source developers can distribute software built using them, but also that they'll make all future updates available using the same terms.
Here is the Official Microsoft Site and CRN
and Techworld have stories about it."
Is this thing GPL-compatible? It doesn't say...all I could find is the following:
The terms and conditions of these licenses differ in material respects. We believe you can distribute your program under many open source software licenses so long as you include the notices described in the licenses for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas. On the other hand, some open source licenses may include specific constraints or restrictions that might preclude development under the Office 2003 XML Reference Schema licenses. You should check with your legal counsel if you have questions about a particular open source software license.
"That may preclude development" sounds fishy. Knowing MS hates the GPL, they might have made it GPL-incompatible. I can't wait till Pamela Jones scrutinizes this. Before I read the Groklaw version, I'm holding back the celebration.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Where's the catch? I mean, there has to be for MS to open up one of the keys to its kingdom. Even if Open Source apps can't use it, commercial ones like WordPerfect can. MS would have to compete on merits, not on their monopoly, from now on. That doesn't sound something MS would want to do.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Where's the catch? I mean, there has to be for MS to open up one of the keys to its kingdom. Even if Open Source apps can't use it, commercial ones like WordPerfect can. MS would have to compete on merits, not on their monopoly, from now on. That doesn't sound something MS would want to do.
It's the lesser of two evils for Microsoft. The thought of being excluded from the government contracts for not being open would probably make Microsoft's management squirm.
The reason being is that we would probably see the widespread deployment of some non-MS office suite as a result and this would work towards loosening their strangle-hold on the desktop productivity suite.
By opening formats, they can get in on these contracts. So while it may still damange their business model it will damage it less than not opening formats.
Simon.
Yes, they are mainly doing this to get government contracts.
Yes, they are probably doing this to get good PR among geeks.
But hell, they're still doing it!
Let's try not to be too cynical, Slashdotters. Microsoft is doing a good thing here. This doesn't forgive them for all the other naughty things they do, not by a long shot, but it's still a big deal and a big step forward.
Hip hip hooray!
apterous.org
Answer me this: the GPL is incompatable with pretty much every other Opensource license out there (other licenses may be GPL compatable but that doesnt mean it works both ways), so why should everything be GPL compatable? Thats pretty much the first thing that comes up in discussions on slashdot 'is it GPL compatable?' or 'why couldnt they just use the GPL?'.
The way the GPL is currently written means GPLed projects can take from most other non GPLed projects without giving anything back, which I thought was one of the reasons for opensource?
Sometimes I wonder if the GPL itself could be proven to be GPL incompatible...
I think this is exactly what is happenning. Microsoft owns the office suite arena. As of right now they have nothing to really worry about in any of the other office suites. The only thing that they have to think about is all the users of older versions of MS Office.
If they can get away with opening their document and getting some of the OSS people to think that it is a setup that they are going to use at some point in the future then the better for them.
One of the bonuses for them is that they already have this document format implemented. So they have a head start on what they expect to be the de facto standard.
This move might even be the best way for Microsoft to compete with open source. That is they must keep ahead of open source. They create something new, release it, then open up the format (which would be reverse engineered if they didn't; it also looks good that they are playing along with OSS), and as soon as competeders catch up they release something new again. As long as whatever they release is better than the one before it then not only do they generate profits but they remain a step ahead of everyone else.
I bet they are expecting the open source community to do some innovation as well. With their format open and based on xml there should soon start appearing multiple xsl methods of generating xhtml from the word documents. Their licence might even be compatable enough that they could use the best of these xsl documents to make word save html files. The best part of this for them is that innovation done by the open source community is free innovation for microsoft. Meanwhile innovation by microsoft takes time and energy for the open source community to decipher.