Microsoft Receives Open Source VIP Blessing

* * Beatles-Beatles writes to let us know that Larry Rosen has given his blessing to the new terms that Microsoft is Making their Office XML Reference Schema available under. Rosen, "the attorney that wrote the book on open source licensing and the man who was the Open Source Initiative's first general counsel and secretary," described this move as the "most significant olive branch to date" to come from the Redmond software giant.

Comments

Submitter is a link spammer-stop posting his stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm recycling a comment from another AC in another Scuttlemonkey/**Beatles-Beatles post. This guy's getting worse than Roland Picklepail:

Am I the only person who has noticed the numerous stories that get posted by *--Beatles-Beatles? Am I also the only person who has noticed that the link used in is name is a constantly changing URL (depending on the story) with pointers to various scammy sites? Is it not obvious what he's doing? He's using the awesome PageRank of slashdot do promote his sites based on searches that have the word Beatles in them.

It's a small price to pay for free advertising. Find a story, summarize it in 5 minutes, post to slashdot, and get a pagerank boost that advertisers would pay hundreds (or maybe thousands) for. (Text links on high-ranking sites is big business - just ask oreilly).

Slashdot should at least put a ref=nofollow in the links to submitters (or better yet, only link the submitter's name to his/her user page).

In closing, a quick bit of WHOIS shows that all the sites linked by **B-B are registered to Carl Fogle. Carl, cut this crap out.

Back in Mass.

[DrEldarion]

This move has put Microsoft back in the race in Massachusetts. They were previously threatening to disqualify MS due to not supporting any standards.

Is this really open source ?

[axonis]

Isn't this really just a standards specification for the office file format in XML and thus has nothing to do with open source since Microsoft is not providing any code ?

Let's wait for the licence of patents

[eleknader]

Yes, the format will be open.

What Microsoft is likely to do is:
- add own extentions and not release them
- forbid relicencing of patents so that no implementation can be released under LGPL / GPL

IMHO this is just a trick. MS wants everybody to wait for 18 months before this is really released, and prevent Open Source competition with patent licence restrictions.

We'll see this after two years, I hope I'm wrong but if this happends, I'll come back and say:

See, I told you so! :)

Eleknader

Re:Isn't XML readable anyways?

[Alphix]

XML is just a language, you can make the documents as incomprehensible as you want....

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<legalnote>
        <warning>This document scheme is patented, copyright protected and trademarked</warning>
        <uspto>US1234567</uspto>
</legalnote>

<blob type="binary" encryption="proprietary 40-bit">
        <key type="public" enc="hex">
                e5e9fa1ba31ecd1ae84f75caaa474f3a663f05f4
                bd30361aa855686bde0eacd7162fef6a25fe97bf
        </key>
        <data enc="hex">
                2bb80d537b1da3e38bd30361aa855686bde0eacd
                7162fef6a25fe97bf527a25bb1da3e38bd30361a
        </data>
</blob>

<blob type="image" codec="proprietary">
        <data enc="hex">
                30361aa855686bde0eacd7162fef6a25fe97bf527a25b
                2bb80d537b1da3e38bd30361aa855686bde0eacd30361
        </data>
</blob>

Re:Submitter is a link spammer-stop posting his st

[snero3]

You definitely have a point there. Might be something taco should look into? But just remember your point always has more impact when you sign your post with your name and not just AC.

If you believe in it stand up for it don't just hide in the back ground.

Re:Since when...

[blane.bramble]

The original company name is MicroSoft, hence the abbreviation to MS. Go look at some old MS products, and you will see the original logo.

Re:Here is a dumb thought

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Here is a dumb thought...
Don't click on his|her link.

Except it doesn't matter whether anyone here clicks on the link, google's pagerank system is the one "clicking on the link" - the end result being an increase in the guy's ranking in google so that people who don't even know what slashdot is will see the guy's site come up in searches for "beatles" and they will click on the link through google instead.

Re:Submitter is a link spammer-stop posting his st

[BarryNorton]

OK, I take it back - here's the one I could find that wasn't approved by ScuttleMonkey:

FEC Deciding Future of Political Blogs

Here are the ones (currently indexed by Google) that were:

Wifi Camera Uploads without Computer

Microsoft Adopts Virtual Licenses

Cisco Updates Network Security Technology

Google and Oregon Launch Open Source Initiative

Open-Source Insurance

Archaeological [sic] Uncovers a New Name

New Server Chip Niagara

Sprint Launchings Music to Mobile Downloads

MIT Wireless Campus Tracking Users

Consumer Friendly Downloads?

Paris Accelerates Move to Open Source

Still Does Not Meet MA's Definition Of Open

[codepunk]

This still does not meet MA's Defininition of a Open Format. Anyone listening to the hearings knows that MA's definition of a Open Format includes the ability of mulitple vendors to have equal input to the format specification. MS soley controls the MS XML format therefore it does not meet the MA qualification as a Open Format.

Now of course I fully expect crooked politics and money to fix that little loop hole.