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Microsoft to Open up Office Formats
Been on TV writes to tell us that Microsoft is expected to announce on Tuesday the opening of their Office file formats, according to Financial Times. From the article: "Microsoft will submit its Office file formats to Ecma International, the standards body, which will develop the documentation and make it available to the industry. The move is being supported by a number of organizations including Apple Computer, Barclays Capital, BP, Intel and Toshiba."
It may be an ECMA standard, but it could still be patented. IIRC, the ECMA / patent issue affect Mono as well. From the Mono FAQ : "The core of the .NET Framework, and what has been patented by Microsoft falls under the ECMA/ISO submission"
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I wonder what kind of impact Microsoft hopes to achive by doing this.
Fully documenting the Microsoft Office file formats and permissively licensing any essential patents could help dissuade governments from migrating to OASIS OpenDocument format, which happens to be the native format of a competing software package called OpenOffice.org 2.x.
According to this post by a Microsoft employee, the format is free to use. In his next post, Brian points out that the license is perpetual; that is, it cannot be changed once granted. He cites the license itself, which says, that the license is perpetual for everyone, and is only terminable if the individual sues Microsoft over patent infringement claims relating to reading or writing of Office Schemas.
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Out of date. That refers to Microsoft's pseudo open format licensing. Specifically crafted to exclude GPLed software from legally using the formats. If this announcement tomorrow is supposed to mean that Massachusetts and the EU won't drop them, then it will have to drop the license terms that stop sub-licensing, such that GPL apps may use the formats. Anything less won't cut it.
MS says it will go to ECMA first with the Office 12 XML format. They say that once Office 12 XML is recognized by ECMA, they will go to ISO. See News.com story.
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From the license:
"Microsoft may have patents and/or patent applications that are necessary for you to license in order to make, sell, or distribute software programs that read or write files that comply with the Microsoft specifications for the Office Schemas."
and that's why this has never been acceptable to the open-source community.
Steven
In order to 'legally' use a patent, you need a license to the patent. The GPL prohibits any requirement which forces said license to be included in any GPL software.
The GPL is incredibly restrictive about what you can suck in. Everything must be free, both in and out. Patents are not "free". Therefore they can't freely be sucked 'in'. And you can't distribute GPL'd software without the license to the patent, meaning it can't be freely pushed 'out'.
I don't see how anyone can view this is being a deliberate attempt to subvert the GPL. The philosophy behind the GPL by its very nature prohibits this sort of thing. I suppose there is a bit of irony about how one of the more restrictive OSS licenses produces something ultimately free-er than the less restrictive licenses.
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Massachusetts quite explicitly did in their document on requirements for a new file format standard.
I don't think the EU have. But it was only a matter of time.
In case anyone else is wondering what COTS means:
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/COTS.html