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Microsoft Partially Opens Proprietary XML Format
eschasi writes "Groklaw has an article up
reporting that Microsoft
is going to open up their XML representation of the DOC format in response to Massachusetts' demand for
open formats. According to Groklaw there are some interesting caveats involved in the move. From the license: 'We are acknowledging that end users who merely open and read government documents that are saved as Office XML files within software programs will not violate the license'. While opening up the format even partially is a good idea, it's still a far cry from folks being able to write programs that create DOC-compatible files."
Naw... It's right here: http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/05/03/25/1428241.s html?tid=163&tid=158
The MS Game "Allegiance" was actually 100% open-sourced by MS a while ago, just for your info too. I know it's not a document format, but MS (especially the developers section) does open-source stuff on occasion.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Sort of but that's not the point. They are crappy work arounds for the proprietary format. If the XML isn't all fucked up like MSFT probably wants it to be then anyone can easily view the documents (and write them) in any current AND future program that can read standardized XML.
If MSFT can't close the document format and any program can correctly read/write documents in the way they were intended what advantage does MSFT have.
That's why MSFT doesn't want this and everyone else does.
I believe the licensing for Word forbids you from opening the files it creates in anything other than Word. I'm not certain though, having never read it myself. Also, MS has some bogus patents on their .doc format and we all know how many years they can tie things up in the courts for. Mass. probably does not have the money to fight a court battle against MS.
Yes, but they did this through reverse-engineering. IANAL but this probably leaves them open to DMCA lawsuits.
Microsoft has simply left this alone because OO.o and the others aren't yet a threat. If they ever become one, you'll see the floodgates open.
The problem with the MS implementation as I have understood it is Microsoft has used xml as transport for their proprietary DOC format, not defined their DOC structure in xml. There's a difference here. The former being the case, yes, you can get to the xml and "see" the DOC, but it is just an ascii encoded binary... so, you really get nothing more than the old proprietary stuff, AND an extra layer of obfuscation! Hardly what xml was supposed to be about.
They don't have to open it up . . . unless they want the state of Massachusetts to use it for public documents. MS wants to sell the stuff to MA, so they responded to the customer's needs.
What kind of anti-capitalist are you ?
Reverse-engineering for compatibility purposes is still legal under the DMCA. Reverse-engineering is OK as long as you don't do it to infringe upon copyright.
Source, The text of the DMCA, Chapter 12, Section 1201.f (find within page for "reverse engineering")
The previous sig has been removed due to
Also, any software that implements this is violating the spirit of the GPL. The license explicitly restricts use of the patents to reading and writing MS documents. Noone may take such an application and modify it to make their own XML document format.
- krafty
As you understand it, you are complete wrong. If you don't know for sure, why spread rumors? That doesn't help the cause.
http://www.microsoft.com/Office/xml/faq.mspx
Q. Are the licenses that Microsoft offers under the Open and Royalty-Free Office 2003 XML Reference Schema program perpetual in nature?
A. Yes. The licenses for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas are perpetual. There is no term limit on the licenses.
Q. Can the licenses for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas be used by open source developers?
A. Yes. Open source developers who wish to participate in a community development project can enter into the agreements and then work in a collaborative fashion on development of a program or programs.
Q. Can I distribute a program that can read and/or write files that support the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas in source code form?
A. Yes. You can distribute your program in source code form. But, note that the patent and copyright provisions in the license for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas require you to include a notice of attribution in your program.
There may be many patents on different aspects of your fridge. However, the manufacturer of the fridge or the subcomponents of the fridge either own or license any relevant patents. I'm not clear on the exact details of patent law. Maybe that's sufficient or maybe there's an implied or explicit sublicensing for use of the fridge. In any case, it is handled "upstream".
You could write your own private application to read/write these formats and maybe that wouldn't be illegal. I'm not sure. But it really isn't practical for everyone to write their own app. And it certainly will require a patent license from MS to distribute any such application. Effectively (or maybe legally) a patent lincense is required to legally read/write the document formats.
Assuming the patents get approved. AFAIK, they're still pending.
- krafty
There appears to be nothing at http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2003/word ml
wordml. Is that like Manimal? Never mind. :)
Offic outputs real xml with no base64 encoded or cdata blocks
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
The First Ammendment expands your rights.
The First Amendment (along with the rest of the Bill of Rights) was not intended to expand rights but to clarify rights that already existed.
Some of the Founders felt that the Bill of Rights was unnecessary because the Federal Government's role was so limited by the body of the Constitution that it wasn't possible for the Federal government to impose on any of the rights itemized in the Bill of Rights. At the time, there were concerns (valid, as it turns out) that itemizing a subset of one's rights in the Bill of Rights could lead to actually limiting the rights of states and individuals to those listed (although the Ninth and Tenth Amendments tried to address these concerns, they have not met this goal very successfully as they have been increasingly ignored by the courts).
The adoption of the Bill of Rights was mostly to address the concerns of the Antifederalists and "take the wind out of their sails". By the time the Bill of Rights was ratified, there was relatively little interest in it since the Federalists had prevailed already -- but since they had prevailed, in part, based on the promise to consider a Bill of Rights, it went ahead. I think today we might consider the Bill of Rights as something arising from "cloakroom politics".
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
XML is a W3C recommendation (not an open standard; W3C makes that distinction for a reason). It is based on SGML (not UML). XML is a meta-markup language like SGML; it is a means of specifying markup languages such as HTML or WML (not a markup language like HTML). Being a W3C recommendation, XML is copyrighted... by the W3C (not it cannot be copyrighted). Patenting and licensing of XML schemas or DTDs (which is what Microsoft did) is not the same thing as copyrighting anything (tools, formats used by tools, whatever) As for You can write anything on paper but it still doesn't make it true? I couldn't agree more. In fact that statement is as true of Slashdot comments as it is of paper. Jeez, I hate Microsoft as much as any Slashdotter, but at least get your facts straight!
It's a penny for your thoughts, but you put in your two cents worth. Somebody, somewhere is making a penny. SteveWright
Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/default.mspx
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Standard disclaimer: IANAL, and this is my intepretation from reading patent law.
That said, patents have an interesting way of working. The patent holder can prevent the USE of his/her patent, even if it's non-commercial (aka private) use. This means that if the patent holder (Microsoft) gives a patent license that says you can READ them, then it doesn't matter who created the original Word document to begin with -- Microsoft has patented the format of that document, and any use of the propritary format falls under patent law. And patent law explicitely states that even USE of such a patent can enforced by the patent holder.
The magic "EULA" that you accepted is US patent law, which applies to anyone in the United States. Just living here is the EULA.
So, in a nutshell, the creator of that document owns a copyright on that document, but the format used to create that document is patented by Microsoft, so they get to enforce that patent and anyone who did not agree to their EULA can be sued.
Of course, Microsoft doesn't really care about an individual user, but anyone writing a tool to write a file into their patented document type falls under the "distribution" clause of patents, and that company is fair game.
Microsoft can not prevent you from writing software that creates .doc files. What the can do, is prevent you from writing software that creates .doc files if you read the .doc file specification. They own the specification, and can put any conditions on it they like (up to those permitted by law). You then have to choose between reverse engineering the format (assuming you live somewhere where it is still legal), or getting a copy of the spec and only adding read support.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
OK, there seems to be a lot of confusion here. I have heard, but do not have confirmation that the MS Word license includes a clause that says you will not open/modify any files you create in anything but Word.
You are contributing to the confusion. I have just read the Word 2003 EULA and no such clause exists.
The relevant point of using XML is that it's a standard for serializing and deserializing structured data in a way that doesn't depend on the type of data.
XML is a markup language, not a language for serializing data structures. The two are not the same: most of XML is completely unnecessary for serializing data structures, so something much simpler would do, while at the same time, XML lacks primitives for common data structures found in real programming languages. That makes XML a really poor choice for serializing data structures.
XML has been misused for the purpose of serializing data structures, but that's fitting a square peg into a round hole.
XML is designed for document interchange. It's an idiosyncracy of MS Word that it is currently using data structure serialization ("marshalling") for its storage format. Actually, it's not even an idiosyncracy, it is plainly idiotic. But that's not the worst problem with MS Word anyway.